


It Will Come Back

by sangha



Series: I'll Find My Way Back to You [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Depression, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Some Descriptions of Violence, Stucky Big Bang 2016, Therapy, Wakanda, it's mostly canon compliant except bucky doesn't go in the freezer, mentions of torture, recovery fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-09 23:08:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7820812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangha/pseuds/sangha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Ever since the events on the Potomac, he hasn’t had a real moment of rest, his mind constantly assaulting him with memories. Even the innocent memories are exhausting; trying to understand where each memory fits in the narrative of his life. The more vicious memories invade his mind day and night. And to make matters worse, he had to fight for his life. Only now that he finally has time to slow down, he feels just how tired he really is. The exhaustion has seeped into his bones and his muscles and it’s clouding his mind.</i>
</p><p>---</p><p>Or: Bucky is forced to face his demons now that he has nothing else to focus on, though not without a lot of help from his newfound friends and a lot of therapy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my submission for the Stucky Big Bang 2016. 
> 
> Title taken from Hozier.
> 
> \---
> 
> Endless hanks to the wonderful and lovely [Sietske](http://thorinsbraidedpubes.tumblr.com/) and [Ymke](https://www.facebook.com/ymkedegraaffart/?fref=ts), who listened to me complain about being stuck in the writing process with endless patience. 
> 
> Also thanks a million to the artists who collaborated with me on this fic: [@scheissedraws](http://scheissedraws.tumblr.com//) and [@whatthefoucault](http://whatthefoucault.tumblr.com/), this collab kept me motivated throughout.

_I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep._

_Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut_

  


He writes down everything he remembers. He can’t make much sense of it at first; just seemingly unconnected memories floating to the surface. The first notebook he buys is filled with innocuous, mundane descriptions interspersed with visceral, bloody memories. 

James Buchanan Barnes. That’s the first thing he writes down. It means little to him, the name triggering a vague feeling of recognition, but nothing more. The man who said the name is far more prominent in his mind. His name leads him to the Smithsonian exposition. He looks at the footage of himself and the Captain laughing. He barely recognizes himself. He can barely imagine being that relaxed around another human being, but he knows he must be capable of it; the evidence is right in front of him. 

\---

Many months and many notebooks later, he fights by Steve Rogers’ side once again. He can feel Steve’s hope emanating from him; Bucky can hardly bear the look in Steve’s eyes. If there is one thing he has learned from his notebooks, it’s that he’s changed. He is not the man Steve knew. But in Steve’s eyes he sees the unfaltering belief that Bucky can be his friend, that everything can go back to the way it was because they are both here now. Never mind that neither of them fully understand this century, or that the blood on Bucky’s hands will not be washed off, that it’s seeped into the cracks of his metal arm and down to the very core of his being. 

After the fighting is done, Bucky tries to get up, but loses his balance. His arm is still on the floor. Steve comes over, supports his weight and they walk out together, leaving Stark behind. The anger is slowly seeping out of his veins, a strange kind of anxiety settling in its place. He’s not sure what shape Stark is in and he’s afraid to ask. He doesn’t think Steve would kill Stark, but he’d never seen Steve lose control like that.

They head to the jet, Steve limping beside him. The Black Panther is waiting for them and Bucky tenses at the sight. He is in no shape for another fight, but he won’t go down without one. T’Challa doesn’t look poised for a fight though; he’s alert but not tense. 

“You need a place to hide,” he says without preamble.

Steve raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Yes, we do,” he says cautiously.

T’Challa turns to Bucky, looking solemn. “I made a mistake, I apologize. I acted rashly after my father’s death. I ask for your forgiveness.” 

Bucky is stunned into silence for a moment. He wasn’t expecting an apology, much less a plea for forgiveness. “It’s fine.” He gets it. If anyone killed Steve, he’d fly into a rage as well.

T’Challa nods. “Thank you.” He pauses for a moment, then addresses them both. “I would like to offer you a safe hiding place in Wakanda, for as long as is necessary.” He hands them a piece of paper with coordinates.

Steve takes it by way of accepting the offer. “We’ll just need a place to lie low until all this settles down.” 

“Take as long as you need.” T’Challa looks behind him. “I will stay behind and take care of Zemo. It’ll give you a headstart. Besides,” he says, grinning, “they won’t expect us to work together.” They shake hands and T’Challa walks away.

Steve shrugs as Bucky throws him a questioning look. “He seems trustworthy enough,” Steve says. 

Bucky isn’t so sure, although that might have something to do with T’Challa’s previous personal vendetta against him. He’s too tired to argue in any case. They get on the jet, punch in the coordinates, and take off.

“How’s the arm?” Steve asks once they’re high up in the air. 

Bucky considers for a moment. “I can feel that it’s gone, but it doesn’t hurt. They didn’t add that kind of sensitivity to the tech. No sense in a weapon that feels pain.”

Steve flinches. 

“We should go back for the others,” Steve says, breaking the silence that had filled the space. 

“You and your goddamn sense of duty,” Bucky says.

“Language,” Steve says, hint of a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Bucky snorts. He remembers this. The Howlies always joked about Captain America’s squeaky clean image. Steve could curse like a sailor when he wanted to. “The others fall for that bullshit?”

“Yeah, Tony thought…” Steve snaps his mouth shut. The events of the past few days fill the jet, occupying every surface with the oppressive silence they bring. There is nothing to say.

Bucky is unsure how long they stay silent. He can feel the anxiety, like ants crawling beneath his skin. He wants to get off the jet, get away from Steve, get out of this mess that he’s responsible for. Maybe he and Stark can fix things if Bucky is out of the way. Steve wouldn’t have to go into hiding because of _him._ But a selfish part of him wants to stay and keep Steve for himself. His handlers would laugh at him for wanting something. Weapons don’t desire. 

“I’ll ask T’Challa,” Steve says out of nowhere.

“What?” Bucky isn’t sure if Steve has been talking to him and he was so far off that he didn’t hear him or if Steve has been thinking to himself and finished his thoughts out loud. He doesn’t ask.

“To help break out the others. We can’t just leave them.”

Bucky agrees, he’s just not sure enlisting the help of the Black Panther in staging a prison break from a maximum security facility is such a foolproof plan. But as usual, Steve will come up with some half-baked plan and as usual, Bucky will follow him.

They revert to silence again. Bucky can feel Steve’s eyes on him, knows that Steve wants to ask him a million questions that he’s not equipped to answer. It should be easy between them, but the old memories are like a wall between them, childhood friends who don’t know how to connect as adults. Talking about trivial things from their youths seems ridiculous when they both know they’ve got decades of horrors between them. Worse, it’s disingenuous. This is precisely why he kept running, not just from HYDRA, but also from Steve. Seeing Steve means having to be the old Bucky, when that Bucky doesn’t exist anymore. 

When they land at long last, Bucky has to fight his instinct to run. They are met by a young woman who vaguely resembles T’Challa. 

“T’Challa called ahead to say you were coming. My name is Shuri, I’m his sister.” She takes a closer look at Steve and Bucky. “You need medical assistance,” she says, leaving no room for argument. “Please follow me.” 

She leads them to a medical facility. Bucky’s heart rate goes up as he sees people in lab coats. Rationally, he knows they aren’t HYDRA, but his anxiety still spikes. He tries to act normal. 

Shuri talks to a doctor in Wakandan. The man introduces himself, but Bucky can only hear the thumping of his heart and the rushing of his blood. Suddenly, it’s hard to breathe, black spots dancing in front of his eyes. He knows he’s panicking and orders himself to calm down. It only increases his panic. The Soldier wouldn’t respond like this. They beat the panic right out of him. And yet, here he is, hyperventilating before the doctor has even touched him. He feels sick, but forces himself to keep the bile down. 

He’s not sure how long it takes for him to calm down. When he finally does, the doctor and Shuri have left the room. Steve is looking at him in sympathy. Bucky looks away. The silence stretches out between them, until Shuri enters the room again.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Captain Rogers, but my brother would like to speak to you.” She points him to a room where he can take the call and lingers when Steve has left. “You’ve seen a lot.” Again, she doesn’t ask. Bucky wonders if it’s her accent that’s causing this inflection or if she has a habit of pointing out observations like this. Bucky just nods in response. “Would it help if the doctor took off his coat?” she asks.

Not her accent, then. She’s just a keen observer. “Maybe,” Bucky says. He’s not particularly sure about anything at the moment. 

“He can give you something to calm you down, but,” she smiles a little, “he will have to get near you to do that.” 

Bucky decides he likes her. She doesn’t look at him with pity, she only observes, like a cat. Figures she’s T’Challa’s sister. Bucky grins at her. “I’ll manage.”

Steve comes back into the room. He looks from Bucky to Shuri, picking up the much more relaxed atmosphere. “T’Challa has reached out to Natasha. They’ll break the others out and bring them here.” He looks a little disgruntled as he says it. 

“You offered to go with him, didn’t you?” Bucky asks, snorting. Steve never could turn down a mission.

Steve nods. “He said it was too big a risk and a needless one at that.” 

“My brother is right,” Shuri chimes in. “You are safe here and soon your friends will be too.” She turns to Bucky and says, “I will send in the doctor again.” 

The doctor comes back without his lab coat and though Bucky is tense, he doesn’t panic again. He looks over both their injuries, quietly marveling over how quickly they both heal, though he is worried about Bucky’s arm. “I need to do more tests to know how this is connected to your central nervous system,” he explains. “If you want the arm replaced, we can provide you with an upgrade, but first we need to know how this one is connected.” 

“What if I don’t want a replacement?” Bucky asks. Steve’s eyeballs nearly pop out of their sockets, but Bucky ignores him.

The doctor considers. “We’d still need to do those tests, to understand how it functions before removal.” 

Bucky nods. “Okay.”

The rest of the day, a number of doctors run tests on what’s left of Bucky’s arm and on his brain. None of them wear lab coats. They clean up the remains of his arm, making sure there are no loose wires and providing him with a black cap to cover it up.

Shuri sets them up with an apartment that takes up an entire floor. It’s a large building, though the other apartments appear to be vacant. “Your friends will join you in this building,” Shuri explains. “T’Challa wants to keep you all in one place.” The corners of her mouth twitch. “Don’t tell him I said that,” she adds, looking at Bucky. If Bucky didn’t know any better, he’d think she was flirting, but he knows he looks like a one-armed hobo who’s lost his mind, so he figures he must be imagining it. “If you would rather have separate accommodation, I can arrange that,” Shuri offers, “but my brother said you have a lot of catching up to do.” Her mouth quirks like she knows something they don’t.

The apartment is larger than anything Bucky has ever lived in. 

“It’s fine,” Steve assures her. 

Bucky can feel Steve’s eyes on him, knows that Steve wants to stay in the same apartment so he can keep an eye on Bucky. Steve’s been wearing that dumb frown of his ever since they got to the hospital.

Once they’re alone, Steve looks uncomfortable instantly. “Are you okay with this, Buck? Sharing, I mean.”

“I get nightmares,” Bucky says, as if that answers Steve’s question.

Steve shrugs. “So do I.”

“I’m a shitty roommate,” Bucky tries again. 

Steve sighs. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it ain’t happening. You’re not going to be on your own for my sake.” His jaw sets in that stubborn way of his. 

Bucky can tell there’s no use in arguing. Part of him doesn’t _want_ to argue about it either. He quite literally can’t remember what it’s like to sleep in an actual bed, one with a decent mattress. And anyway, Shuri offered him an out. If he doesn’t want to live here, she’ll get him his own place. “Fine.” 

Steve tries to hide the grin that threatens to spread across his face. “Which bedroom do you want?” he asks.

Bucky shrugs. He doesn’t really care. He stands in the living room while Steve inspects both bedrooms. 

“Okay if I take this one?” Steve asks, pointing to the one on the right. 

Bucky shrugs again. “Sure.” 

Steve drops his duffel bag in the room and begins to unpack the few possessions contained in it. Bucky feels a creeping feeling of unease. It’s as if he’s intruding on Steve’s life, forcing him into hiding, torn away from everything he knows and loves, just with his presence. He feels rooted to the spot, unsure of what to do. Taking up space in someone else’s life is not something he’s used to anymore. 

“You alright, Buck?” Steve asks, shaking him out of his reverie. When Bucky doesn’t answer, Steve steps a little closer. “I’m happy you’re here. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, okay,” is all Bucky manages to say.

“C’mon, let’s check out the rest of the place,” he says. 

The other bedroom looks very similar to Steve’s, except that it’s slightly darker. The bathroom and kitchen are both very modern, supplied with all kinds of things Bucky doubts he’d ever use. Steve looks warily at the coffee machine, apparently distrustful of its many buttons. The spacious living room is decked out with a comfortable-looking couch, a large TV and surround sound system, and a tablet is lying on the coffee table. Generic paintings adorn the walls. Bucky can see Steve feeling at home here.

Bucky turns in early that night. Neither of them know how to carry themselves, not after everything that happened. So instead he just takes a shower and goes to bed, knowing that he will lie awake for a long time. He hasn’t had a full night’s sleep ever since he started running from HYDRA and Steve. At least this time he has an actual bed. The mattress is firm but comfortable and Bucky is glad for it. He’d rather sleep on the floor than on a soft mattress; he expects Steve feels the same. 

A memory comes to him as he’s lying in bed, of the first day after Steve moved into his apartment after Sarah died. Steve had been grumpy, defensive, unwilling to show Bucky how much he was hurting and how much he had to rely on his friend. Bucky remembers feeling helpless in the face of such grief and stubbornness. He wonders if Steve feels the same helplessness right now. 

He does fall asleep, eventually. He hadn’t realized how much he missed having an actual bed to sleep in until he lay down and felt the bone-deep ache in his back and shoulders. He drifts off far more quickly than usual and when he feels sleep overtake him, he lets it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art from this chapter can be found [here](http://whatthefoucault.tumblr.com/post/149362387911/a-memory-comes-to-him-as-hes-lying-in-bed-of-the).


	2. Chapter 2

When he opens his eyes, it’s far too bright in the room. The lights are on and Steve is standing a few feet from his bed, looking equal parts shocked and concerned. He blinks a few times, trying to get used to the light.

“Buck? You alright?” Steve asks tentatively. 

Bucky looks around. He’s sweating, the sheets soaked with it, his hair matted to his forehead. Bruises are forming on Steve’s neck. He looks down at his hand, as if it will show evidence of him attacking Steve. “Fuck, I’m sorry.” 

Steve shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.” 

“I attacked you.” Bucky needs to say it, like a form of self-torture.

“You were having a nightmare,” Steve counters. “I should have known better than to get so close when I knew you weren’t awake. It’s my own fault.” 

Bucky wants to punch him. “Do you always have to be such a noble asshole?” 

Steve smiles. “Kind of my thing.” His smile fades then. “You alright?” he asks again.

“Yeah, nothing new,” he says nonchalantly. He doesn’t even remember what the nightmare was about, just the usual shit, he supposes. 

“You were screaming,” Steve says. Bucky can hear the tension in his voice.

“Oh.” It doesn’t surprise him. He just hasn’t slept in the vicinity of anyone who could hear his screams before. 

The silence between them stretches, the only sound in the room Steve’s fidgeting as he tries to figure out what to say. “I could make some tea,” he says eventually.

“No, I’m good.” 

“Okay, well, if you need me, I’m right across the hall,” Steve says hesitantly. He fidgets a few more moments, before leaving the room and closing the door behind him.

\--- 

He doesn’t fall asleep again after that. At 6 AM, he hears Steve get up, so Bucky decides to do the same. 

“Do you always get up at this insane hour?” Bucky asks.

Steve looks up from where he’s sitting on the couch, tying his shoes. “Just going for a run. Want to join?” 

Bucky scoffs. “Fuck no.” He may not be able to go back to sleep, but he feels he’s earned some rest. There is no reason for him to go outside, so he won’t. 

“You never were a morning person,” Steve replies.

Bucky wants to tell him that doesn’t mean anything, that he’s changed, that he might very well be a morning person now, that the Bucky Steve knew died slowly, piece by piece, in that chair. He doesn’t. Instead he makes a noncommittal sound of agreement and waits for Steve to leave before going back to bed. 

Steve comes back an hour later; Bucky hears him get in the shower. He doesn’t feel like moving, even though his own inaction is making him antsy. Shortly after the water in the shower is turned off, there’s a knock on his door. 

Steve opens it slightly, but doesn’t step into the room. “The kitchen is fully stocked, so I’m making breakfast, what do you want?”

“M’not hungry.” It’s not entirely true; he mostly just doesn’t want to move. 

“You need to eat _something_ ,” Steve insists. When Bucky doesn’t answer, Steve sighs and steps into the room. “Look Buck, you’re crashing, I’ve been there. You have to eat to get out of this.” He looks so sincere, Bucky can’t stand it.

“Since when are you the expert?”

Steve smiles. “I’m not. Sam is. He’s had to drag me out of bed and get some food in me plenty of times.”

“Fine.” Bucky moves to get out of bed and Steve offers him a hand, but Bucky shrugs it off. “I can get up by myself,” he says, snappier than he meant to. 

Steve looks hurt but quickly schools his face into a more cheerful expression. Bucky follows Steve to the kitchen and sits down in one of the kitchen chairs while Steve prepares breakfast. Bucky isn’t sure how long he’s been sitting there, staring out the kitchen window of the apartment, before Steve sets down the plates of food in front of him. There’s toast, eggs, bacon, and various fruits. 

Bucky eats slowly, not really paying attention to what he’s eating. Steve shoots him a concerned look every now and then, but Bucky pretends not to notice. He doesn’t have the energy to go into a discussion of his mental state. 

After breakfast, Bucky retreats to his bedroom again. He’s just so very tired. Ever since the events on the Potomac, he hasn’t had a real moment of rest, his mind constantly assaulting him with memories. Even the innocent memories are exhausting; trying to understand where each memory fits in the narrative of his life. The more vicious memories invade his mind day and night. And to make matters worse, he had to fight for his life. Only now that he finally has time to slow down, he feels just how tired he really is. The exhaustion has seeped into his bones and his muscles, it’s clouding his mind, and all he wants is to do nothing. 

He doesn’t have to look at Steve to know that he’s watching Bucky warily. 

Bucky comes out of his room for lunch and dinner, but is too tired to do anything else. After dinner, Steve tries to start a conversation.

“Buck, I know you’re tired but staying in your room all day isn’t going to help. Trust me, I’ve been there.” His voice is nothing but sympathy.

Bucky feels irrationally angry. Steve doesn’t know, how could he know? “You haven’t,” is all he says.

Steve sighs. “Then talk to me, Buck.” There are tears swimming in his eyes.

The anger Bucky felt is redirected toward himself: he’s responsible for making his best friend feel this way. He feels trapped; he can’t talk about what happened, he wouldn’t even know where to begin. But he also can’t do this to Steve. “Maybe I should leave,” he suggests.

Steve’s eyes widen. “Please don’t.” The tears have spilled over now. “Please don’t leave me now.” 

A feeling of uselessness washes over Bucky. He doesn’t know how to be human anymore, but he doesn’t know how to communicate that to Steve. “Just...leave me be for tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow.” It’s a cop-out and he knows it, but he just wants to be alone. 

Tomorrow arrives and they don’t talk. Bucky doesn’t get out of bed for food either. Once Steve realizes that, he brings food to Bucky’s room. The rest of the team arrives late in the afternoon and Steve tries to convince Bucky to come along.

“They’ll be happy to see you,” Steve tries.

“I doubt that,” Bucky grumbles. “You go, I just need to sleep.” 

The day after follows the same pattern. Steve’s despair is evident, so Bucky isn’t surprised when he hears Sam’s voice in the living room. 

“I don’t know what to do,” he hears Steve say.

“He doesn’t leave his room at all?” Sam asks.

“Barely. And he’s eating, but not as much as he should, if his metabolism is anything like mine. I don’t want to push him to talk, but this can’t be good.”

“No, you’re right,” Sam agrees. “We don’t really know what he went through or the extent of the trauma.” Sam pauses for a moment. “Look, you might not want to hear this, but it’s possible he doesn’t want to talk to _you_. He knows how much you care about him, maybe he’s trying to protect you.”

“I don’t need to be protected,” Steve says. The stubbornness in his voice almost makes Bucky smile. 

Sam doesn’t respond to that. “I can try and talk to him, if you want.”

There’s a short pause before Steve says, “Yeah, okay.”

Moments later, there’s a knock on his door and Sam enters. “Hey, man.”

Bucky sits up on his bed in an attempt to look slightly more like a functional human being. He’s not sure why he bothers. 

“So, how are you doing?” Sam asks.

Bucky scoffs. “How does it look like I’m doing?” 

Sam actually grins. “Fair enough. You been sleeping?”

“Not much.” 

“Steve says you’ve been having nightmares.”

“Yeah.” 

Sam sighs. “Look, Bucky. I’m gonna be real with you. None of us fully understand what’s going on inside your head right now. Maybe we’ll never understand. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help.”

Irritation wells up inside Bucky. “ _I_ don’t even know what’s going on inside my head. How the fuck am I supposed to tell you then?” 

“Okay. Well, that’s a start. You don’t have to explain anything. But maybe talking about some things with someone else will help you sort out what’s going on in your head?” Sam suggests.

Bucky considers that for a moment. “You said I don’t talk to Steve because I want to protect him.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “You supersoldiers and your enhanced hearing.” He doesn’t sound annoyed, though. “Is that true?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky replies honestly. 

Sam nods. “Alright. Well, think about what I said, okay?”

“I will,” Bucky says and he means it. Sam has a way of making people want to be the best possible version of themselves, even though he and Bucky haven’t exactly gotten along up to this point. 

\--- 

Bucky has a nightmare again that night. He can feel the restraints closing around his arms, the chair tipping back to offer him up to the machine that destroyed him. He can hear the machine buzzing, preparing to send electric shocks into his brain. Except this time, it’s not Pierce giving the order, it’s Steve. He stands there, emotionless, watching Bucky as he screams for them to stop, his body convulsing in the chair.

He wakes up when he starts to vomit. 

Steve is by his side in seconds, but it only sends him into an even greater panic. That cold look in Steve’s eyes is still bright in his mind’s eye. It takes him a minute to realize that the Steve in front of him is looking concerned and talking to him quietly. 

“Hey, it’s alright, you’re safe,” he’s saying, over and over again.

Bucky calms down a little from his nightmare, but then feels a different kind of panic when he realizes he vomited on the bed, the floor, himself, and Steve. He remembers a few other times the chair made him vomit. They would laugh at him and then humiliate him further by making him clean up while he was still disoriented and shaky. 

“You with me?” Steve asks.

“Think so,” Bucky answers. He’s still shaking, his mind still mixing past, present, and dream, but at least he’s seeing and hearing Steve.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, huh?” Steve asks gently. He extends his hand to pull Bucky up.

Bucky takes it, knowing he would have trouble standing up on his own right now, especially with the arm being gone. Steve leads him to the bathroom and starts running a bath, while Bucky sits on the floor, leaning against the tub. Steve fidgets while the bath is running, looking uncomfortable. He checks the water temperature more times than necessary, but Bucky is too tired to comment on it. Finally, Steve extends his hand again to hoist Bucky up. 

He moves his hands slowly, gesturing to Bucky’s sweatpants. “We need to get you out of these, okay?” As Steve is helping him, he starts to go red. Bucky isn’t sure why; they’ve seen each other naked plenty of times. It happens when you live with a guy and then serve with him in a war. Maybe the prudish image that was pushed on him actually stuck. Steve helps him get in the tub, the warm water instantly relieving some of the tension he built up in his muscles.

“Used to be the reverse,” Bucky says as he settles properly in the tub.

“What’s that?”

“When you used to get sick, I mean.” Those memories were perhaps the most confusing. The ones where Steve was so much smaller and sickly. After the museum, they made more sense, but even then, he had to keep reminding himself for a while that those memories were also of Steve. 

Steve smiles ruefully. “Yeah. About time I returned the favor.” He sits down with his back against the tub, so Bucky can’t see his face anymore. “What was the dream about?” Steve asks after a long silence.

Bucky tenses. “Don’t feel like talking about it.” 

“Buck, you can’t…”

“I said no, alright?” Bucky snaps. 

Steve’s shoulders slump. “I just want to help, Buck.” 

Bucky sighs. “What the fuck good is it going to do if I tell you about this, huh? You don’t want to know what they did,” he says with an air of finality. He’s too tired for this, too worn-out to deal with Steve’s pain on top of his own. He’s seen the way Steve flinches and clenches his jaw whenever Bucky accidentally lets slip something about his time as the Winter Soldier.

“I do if it’ll help you.” 

Bucky opens his mouth to tell Steve it’ll only make things worse, but the words get stuck in his throat. So instead he says nothing.

Steve doesn’t look at him when he helps Bucky out of the tub. He leaves the bathroom immediately after, leaving Bucky by himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find the art in this chapter [here](http://scheissedraws.tumblr.com/post/149352234326/fan-art-for-a-wonderful-stucky-big-bang-fic-it)!


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky feels like shit about what happened the night before. He knows he upset Steve. He feels trapped; no matter what he does, he’ll end up hurting Steve. He hears Steve getting up early again and he is unsure of what to do. He broke something between them last night, he’s sure of it, but he doesn’t know how to even begin to fix the cracks in their relationship. 

As per usual though, Steve prepares breakfast for the both of them. When Steve quietly asks Bucky if he’ll join him for breakfast, Bucky doesn’t have it in him to refuse. 

They sit down at the breakfast table in awkward silence. Steve is fidgeting; Bucky knows he wants to say something but is afraid to. He hates that he made his best, and arguably only, friend in the world feel this way. Before he can work out how to apologize, Steve finally starts speaking.

“I called Sam last night,” he begins. “He said that maybe you should be on your own for a while.” He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Or, at least not in this apartment, living with me.” His voice is on the verge of cracking.

“Why?” 

Another shaky breath. “He thinks this is not good for you. ‘Toxic environment’ are the words he used.”

Bucky looks at him in confusion.

“Cause you hide from me, Buck. You shut me out and that’s the worst thing you could be doing to yourself right now.” He looks Bucky straight in the eye. “You need help, Buck, and I’m not helping you, not like this.”

Sadness and anger flare up inside Bucky, all while he recognizes the truth of what Steve is saying. Still, he has to argue. “It’s not your fault that I’m fucked up.”

“It’s not yours either,” Steve says simply. 

Bucky sighs. “I know that.” He pauses. “I’m sorry about last night, alright? I’ll try to do better.” 

“Buck, this isn’t punishment. I’m - we’re all trying to help you. You shouldn’t have to feel like you need to keep everything inside when you’re at home.” The strain in Steve’s voice is becoming more pronounced with every word. 

Bucky considers Steve’s words. He knows Steve is right. He even said it himself last night: he can’t talk to Steve for fear of hurting him. He can’t deal with the mess in his head like this. 

Steve smiles a small, sad smile. “Besides, it’s not like you’d be far away. Just a different apartment.” Some of the tension breaks, finally.

“Sam’s a lot smarter than he looks,” Bucky says, trying to lighten the mood further. 

Steve snorts. “You’d’ve picked up on that sooner if you guys hadn’t been bickering all the time.” He turns more serious then. “He’s helped me a lot too, you know.”

Bucky smiles. “I’m glad you weren’t alone,” he says sincerely.

The corners of Steve’s mouth tug down again, Bucky’s simple comment having apparently reminded him of the fact that Bucky _was_ alone for a long time. Bucky is instantly reminded of why it would be good for him to live somewhere else, away from the oppressive weight of their combined regret and pain. 

\--- 

They arrange everything that same afternoon. Bucky calls Shuri; he’s not sure if he can just drop by T’Challa’s unannounced. Their host has been extremely gracious so far, but Bucky is unsure of how to behave around a king. He feels the same anxiety coming from Steve, who has an additional fear of saying something inadvertently offensive. 

Shuri is as friendly as she was the day they arrived in Wakanda. “I’m sorry to hear your living arrangements aren’t working out,” Shuri says after Bucky has briefly explained the situation. “But we can easily move you to a different apartment. There is an empty apartment on the same floor as Wanda Maximoff’s, is that alright?” 

Bucky doesn’t really know Wanda very well, they’d barely talked in between the fighting, but she seems kind. Plus, he knows Steve is crazy about the kid, having developed latent paternal feelings in her presence. “Sure. Thank you, Shuri.” He hopes he’s conveyed how grateful he is to her, not just for this, but for the sensitivity with which she’s treated him ever since he got off the plane. 

Packing up his things is strange. He only has a handful of possessions, the home he’d made for himself in Bucharest having been abandoned and his backpack having been taken. He stuffs his clothes in a bag while Steve watches helplessly in the doorway. 

“Hey Buck?” he asks.

“Hmm?”

“What was in the backpack? The one under the floorboards, back in Bucharest?” 

Bucky shrugs. “Notebooks, mostly.” 

Steve is quiet for a moment. “You had a lot of them.” It’s not a question. “What was special about the ones in your backpack?” he asks carefully.

“Those memories were the most important.” He almost adds “I didn’t want to lose them,” but he catches himself just in time.

“Those fucking pieces of shit,” Steve spits suddenly, startling Bucky. “They can’t just keep taking everything from you.”

There’s an all too familiar fire in Steve’s eyes - the kind that got Bucky in a bunch of fights because his best friend couldn’t just keep his mouth shut when he witnessed injustice. The kind that left Steve bruised and battered while Bucky tried to patch him up as best he could. At least they are in Wakanda and Steve can’t physically beat up Everett Ross, even if he wanted to. 

The anger that Steve displays is like a distant memory to Bucky. He was angry for a while, when he first went on the run and had to figure out how to be human on top of dealing with the memories. With every new memory that invaded his mind he became angrier, the realization that an entire lifetime had been stolen from him taunting him every time he remembered something new. But the anger made way for exhaustion after a while. He knows none of this is fair, but he can’t muster up the energy to be mad about it the way Steve is. 

“They didn’t take you,” Bucky says in an attempt to calm Steve down. It’s not until he sees the fond look in Steve’s eyes that he fully realizes the implications of what he just said. It’s the first time that Bucky’s said anything like that to Steve in this century. He used to be so affectionate and tactile, always ready to show Steve how much he valued him, even if nobody else did, but words and touch don’t come so easily anymore. He used to be so talkative it would drive Steve nuts, and now he has no idea how to fill silences, let alone express his deepest feelings. 

The moment hangs between them until Bucky breaks the spell. “And I don’t miss my arm that much either,” he adds as a feeble attempt at a joke.

Steve snorts. “Your terrible sense of humor is alive and well too,” he teases. 

The old Bucky would have come up with some snarky retort, but now he just scoffs. Before another awkward silence can set in, Bucky picks up his bag, Steve taking the hint immediately.

“Be nice to Wanda,” Steve says, trying to sound unfazed and failing miserably.

Bucky actually rolls his eyes at him. “Yeah, yeah.” 

Steve gives up all pretense at lightheartedness then. “I’ll only be two floors away, okay?” he says, voice shaking. 

Bucky suspects he said it just as much for his own benefit as for Bucky’s, needing the reminder that Bucky is not leaving, not really. They’re just not going to be around each other all day long and honestly, he already feels it’s for the better. Knowing that he doesn’t have to keep up appearances, that he’ll have his own space, that he won’t have to deal with Steve’s expectations and pain all the time has already lifted a weight off his shoulders. 

Steve reaches out his arm like he wants to hug Bucky, then thinks better of it. Bucky huffs, mutters, “you big sap,” and pulls Steve into a hug. Steve grips him tighter than Bucky ever remembers and Bucky realizes this is the first time they’ve properly hugged in this century. He forgot how nice it feels to be held by Steve, with all the warmth and love he exudes. 

After what feels like an eternity, Steve lets go and Bucky heads upstairs.

\--- 

He sees Wanda in the hallway between their apartments and she greets him. She doesn’t look surprised to see him there, so Bucky figures Shuri must have informed her. “So I’m your neighbor now,” he says, just to be safe.

“I hope you feel better here,” she says, accent thick. 

“Yeah, me too,” he says, before heading inside. The apartment is very similar to Steve’s, except it’s smaller. He drops his bag in the bedroom, then sinks down in a chair in the living room. He closes his eyes and before he knows it, he’s drifted off to sleep. 

He’s rudely awakened by a ringing phone. It takes him a few moments to locate the phone. “Hello?”

“Hello Bucky, this is T’Challa. Are you busy?”

He almost laughs at the idea of a king asking him if he’s busy. “Not at all.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to you in person. Can you come over to my house?” he asks formally but friendly.

“Uhh, sure,” Bucky answers, surprised. He has no idea why T’Challa would want to spend his precious time speaking with Bucky privately. Surely he has a lot of other things to worry about.

“Good. I’ll send a car to pick you up.” 

\--- 

T’Challa’s palace is not at all what Bucky expected. In fact, all of Wakanda is not what Bucky expected. In school, he was taught that the entire African continent was backward and though he knew on some level that it was racist propaganda, he is still surprised to find the epicenter of technological advancement to be in Africa. 

The palace is certainly very large, but somehow does not look as extravagant as the palaces of European royalty. Its streamlined structure is also much more modern than those palaces, which gives the place an air of practicality. Bucky always thought European castles looked like they weren’t supposed to be inhabited, but this looks lived in, despite its pristine condition. 

T’Challa waits for him at the top of the stairs which lead to a massive doorway. “Thank you for coming,” he says, inclining his head.

Bucky is unsure what the custom is to addressing the king of Wakanda. He’s only spoken to T’Challa as a warrior, this is the first time he really sees him as king in person. “Thank you for inviting me,” he says, deciding he can’t go wrong with that simple sentiment.

T’Challa leads Bucky to a relatively small room which appears to be used as an office and gestures to Bucky to sit down in one of the chairs. Again, Bucky wonders what the custom is, if it’s appropriate to sit down before the king does, but reasons that since T’Challa asked him to sit down, it should be okay. 

“You and Captain Rogers are very uncomfortable around me,” T’Challa observes.

Bucky cringes a little. “I’m sorry. I - we really appreciate everything you’ve done for us. It’s just, well, Steve came into this world dirt poor and my parents lost everything during the Depression. Neither of us ever thought we’d be in the company of kings.”

T’Challa nods. “I understand. Please, consider me your friend before you think of me as king.”

“I will,” Bucky promises.

“Good. Now, I invited you because I want to help my friends. I know a specialist, she’s excellent and I’m confident she will be able to help you,” he says kindly.

Bucky feels a chill down his spine. “What kind of specialist?” He doesn’t trust doctors anymore.

“She is a psychiatrist, trained in dealing with trauma,” T’Challa answers. When Bucky doesn’t reply, he continues. “Of course I don’t know the full extent of what you endured, but I understand you need help.”

“Did Steve tell you?” Bucky asks, suddenly wondering how much Steve told Sam and who else he talked to about Bucky.

T’Challa shakes his head. “Shuri told me what happened at the medical facility. That is all I know.”

Bucky feels a wave of relief. He likes T’Challa, but the idea of Steve talking to a bunch of people about his nightmares or the vomiting fills him with shame. He doesn’t want anyone to think he’s weak.

“Okay,” Bucky finally says. “I’ll talk to her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this chapter can be found [here](http://scheissedraws.tumblr.com/post/149377711828/another-fan-art-for-chapter-3-of-it-will-come-back)!


	4. Chapter 4

Bucky returns to his apartment with a tiny note on which a phone number and a name have been scribbled. Bucky is more anxious than he admitted to T’Challa about seeing a therapist. He understands that the stigma of seeking help for mental health issues has lessened a little, but that doesn’t change the fact that he grew up in an age where he would’ve been locked in an insane asylum if he let on even 10% of what is going on in his mind every day. Add to that his general wariness towards doctors thanks to HYDRA’s efforts and he’s got himself an anxiety cocktail.

As his anxiety and the subsequent nausea builds, he decides to leave the phone call for another time.

A little while later, there’s a knock at his door. He expects it to be Steve, but instead he finds Wanda standing in his doorway, a large pan in her hands.

“Hello,” she says. “May I come in? I brought food,” she adds, as if it wasn’t obvious.

Bucky nods, a little bewildered and not wanting to seem rude by refusing her. 

“Great!” she says, smiling. She carries the pan to the kitchen, rummages through some of the cupboards until she finds the plates and starts serving them the food she prepared. 

Bucky is watching her, feeling awkward. Surely he should be the one to do this for his guest? Wanda doesn’t seem to mind though. 

He has no idea how to start a conversation with this girl, so apart from a quick “thank you for the food,” he just sits at the table and eats in silence. 

“Steve cares about you a lot,” Wanda says apropos of nothing, finally breaking the silence. 

Suddenly Bucky is suspicious. “He send you?” he asks harshly.

Wanda shakes her head. “Believe it or not, I actually wanted to get to know you,” she replies. Bucky feels shame coloring his cheeks; Steve told him to be nice to her and he’s already failed. Wanda continues like she hasn’t noticed. “Steve always talks about you, but I thought I should know you through you, not just through _his_ words. He never said how grumpy you are,” she adds, grinning. 

Bucky snorts. “Leave it to Steve to leave out the shitty stuff.” He’s a little overwhelmed by Wanda’s efforts. To actually want to hear his side, to get to know _him_ , quirks and all, is something he never even thought possible. He felt like all these people were Steve’s friends and they just tolerated Bucky, but it seems like Wanda is actually trying to be _his_ friend. “Thank you,” he says quietly, not knowing how else to convey his gratitude. “So you know Steve sees the world through rose-colored glasses, huh?” 

She quirks her head to one side. “I wouldn’t say he sees the world like that, just the people he cares about. He wouldn’t hear a bad word about me, even when I deserved it,” she says, her eyes downcast. 

Steve told him what happened in Lagos. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“Does it matter?” she shoots back.

Bucky considers. “I guess not.”

It’s the first time he’s felt truly understood. Fault becomes irrelevant when people die at your hands. The weight of the lives that were lost still has to be carried, regardless of your accountability. Steve knows this, but he won’t apply it to anyone but himself, insisting that Bucky and Wanda couldn’t possibly be accountable for their actions. He knows it comes from a good place, but it’s refreshing to talk to someone who doesn’t try to minimize what he’s done. 

“Are you scared it’s gonna happen again?” Bucky asks.

The answer is immediate. “Yes.” She takes a steadying breath. “But I’m also scared of what will happen if I don’t use my powers at all.” Bucky nods in understanding. “Does it help, without the arm?” she asks cautiously.

Bucky shrugs. “I don’t know. I hated it. Always reminding me of everything I did. But not having an arm at all is just as much of a reminder.” He’s stopped eating, his appetite having disappeared as the conversation progressed. So has Wanda.

“Do you remember everything?”

“I remember enough,” he replies. It’s hard to tell if he really remembers everything; he’s not conscious of any gaps in his memory but that doesn’t necessarily mean much. And his timelines are all fucked, half the time he has no idea when a particular thing happened, the torture and the killing having blended into one bloody mess in his head. It’s enough to know that there’s no redemption for someone like him. 

Wanda looks at him with those big eyes of her, not with pity, but with pure sympathy. “You know it’s incredible that you made it this far on your own, right?” 

Bucky scoffs. “Didn’t make it very far from where I’m standing.”

A fire lights in her eyes and Bucky is suddenly strongly reminded of Steve. “You broke through 70 years of programming, lived on your own for two years, and without killing anyone or hurting yourself. Give yourself some credit,” she tells him sternly.

Bucky decides against telling her about killing some of the HYDRA agents on his tail when he first went on the run, or about all those times he tried to rip off his arm. 

“I see why Steve likes you so much,” he says, deftly dodging the subject of how supposedly well-adjusted he is. 

“Can’t say the same for you,” she teases, clearly joking. “What was he like, before the war? He never talks about himself.” 

“He was a little shit,” Bucky says. “Picked fights with guys three times his size and I had to clean up the mess. Never understood how someone like that can be so shy and awkward at the same time.”

“What do you mean?” Wanda asks curiously.

“You shoulda seen him with the ladies. Complete disaster. It’s a good thing that Peggy Carter wasn’t shy about what she wanted.” He smiles fondly at the memories. “He’s shy unless he speaks up about something he believes in, the noble bastard. He’s always been big on those ideal of freedom and equality and all that.” He vaguely registers this is probably the most he’s spoken since he arrived in Wakanda. “Steve sees the best in everyone, and in the world.”

Wanda is quiet for a moment. “I think he changed,” she says slowly, as if afraid to offend Bucky. “I don’t think he thinks the best of the world anymore. I think he knows how ugly it is now.”

“How come?” Bucky asks, something curling in the pit of his stomach.

Wanda visibly hesitates. “You,” she finally says. “Knowing what the world did to you.”

Bucky is suddenly hit with the reality that he’s not the only one who’s changed. He’d been frustrated with Steve for not understanding that Bucky is not the same anymore, but he’s been doing the exact same thing to Steve. 

And what’s worse, he’s the cause of that change. His fucked up being is the reason that Steve can’t look at the world with hope anymore. Once again, he’s overcome with the desire to just take off and run, to go back to the way he was living before Steve came along. Just minding his own business and not fucking up anyone else’s life.

He didn’t even realize that he already half got up until he feels a soft hand on his arm, stilling him. “You know Steve is happy to have you back, don’t you? No matter what?”

“Maybe he shouldn’t be.”

That fire is back in her eyes. “That is not up to you. You can’t tell him how to feel.”

Bucky sits back down, deflated. “Yeah, I guess.”

Wanda gets up to clear their plates and mutters, “Men,” under her breath. 

“I heard that,” Bucky says.

She turns around. “If you two just talked, you might feel better. But no, you men think you know everything without talking to each other first.”

Bucky smiles despite himself. “You’re awful wise for your age.”

She scoffs. “I’m not that young and you’re not that old. Just talk to him.” 

“Yes ma’am,” he replies mockingly. “Thank you for dinner, and everything else,” he adds, more sincerely. 

She smiles. “Next time, you cook.” 

\--- 

That night, he’s standing in front of Steve’s door. After he knocks, he wonders if Steve even wants to see him right now. He only left earlier today, maybe Steve needed more time. But when Steve opens the door and a big smile appears on his face, Bucky knows he need not have worried.

“A tiny Sokovian told me I should talk to you,” Bucky begins. 

Steve smiles even wider and holds the door open. “Come in.”

They sit down and for a minute, it’s awkward again. 

“T’Challa recommended a psychiatrist today,” Bucky says. 

Steve looks a little surprised. “Oh,” he says. “Is that something you want to do?” he asks cautiously.

Bucky shrugs. “I think so.” He tries to smile but he knows it looks more like a grimace. “Don’t think I have much of a choice.”

“You always have a choice,” Steve protests.

“You know what I mean.” He can’t keep waking up from nightmares, scared and sick; he can’t deal with the mess in his mind on his own. 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees.

Wanda was right: they don’t talk. They dance around subjects and leave the most important things unspoken, trusting the other to understand. They used to know each other so well that it was never an issue: they _did_ know exactly what the other was thinking. But they can’t rely on that anymore, not completely anyway. 

Bucky takes a deep breath, steadying himself. “We’re not the same people anymore,” he begins. He sees Steve open his mouth to protest, but he needs to get this out. “No, just let me say this, alright?” Steve nods. “I can’t be the Bucky you knew, and you can’t go back to who you were in 1942 either. We can’t just keep assuming we know what’s going on in each other’s heads.” 

“So where does that leave us?” Steve asks, voice shaky.

“Dunno. Guess we have to get to know each other again.”

Steve nods. “Guess so.” Suddenly he smiles to himself. “So you got all this from Wanda, huh?”

“She’s a smart kid,” Bucky says affectionately.

“She is,” Steve agrees. “How’s your apartment?” 

“It’s fine, a smaller version of this one. Kinda familiar that way.” Steve smiles at that. “How are you doing?”

Steve shrugs. “Sam dropped by earlier. Said I looked like shit.”

Bucky snorts. “Well, at least you’ll be able to get a full night’s sleep tonight.”

“Not funny, Buck,” Steve chides, even though the corners of his mouth tug upwards. 

“Go get some sleep,” Bucky says, more seriously this time. “You need it.” 

He gets up to leave, but Steve grabs his wrist. “Are you gonna be alright, tonight?” Worry creases his brow. 

“Don’t worry about me,” Bucky reassures him. He thinks of what Wanda said to him earlier. “I made it on my own for two years.” And with that, he retreats to his own apartment. 


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning, Bucky finally musters up the courage to call the therapist T’Challa recommended. He’s scared shitless and entirely unsure of what to expect. He reasons with himself that he’s been through much, much worse and should just get it over with.

The receptionist on the other end of the line is friendly enough. T’Challa or someone on his staff must have informed them that Bucky might call: as soon as he mentions his name, the receptionist tells him Dr. Ngeme can see him that same afternoon if he likes. At least this way he won’t have a lot of time to fret before the session, so he agrees to meet her at 2PM. 

He takes a long shower to try and calm his nerves and ends up heading out far too early. Dr. Ngeme’s office is located in the same medical facility as the one where Bucky went on his first day and it’s just a short walk. 

The receptionist greets him when he walks in and gives him a friendly smile. Bucky’s knee starts bouncing uncontrollably as soon as he sits down. 

A few minutes later, the receptionist approaches him, carrying a large mug. “Have some tea, sir,” he says, placing the mug on the small table in front of Bucky. “It will have a calming effect.”

Bucky is skeptical of the healing properties of tea, but he takes it anyway. “Thank you,” he says politely. He takes small sips, afraid his stomach won’t be able to handle anything else. 

After what feels like an eternity, Dr. Ngeme’s office door opens. She’s tiny, petite, and looks very young. Bucky suspects she wears those thick-rimmed glasses because they make her look a little bit older, at least. Her long hair is braided and held up in a bun.

“James Barnes?” she asks, as if it’s not obvious that the nervous-looking white guy in her office must be her next client. He nods and gets up. “I’m Adia Ngeme, come on in, James,” she says. Her accent is very similar to T’Challa’s and Shuri’s, though a bit more pronounced. 

“I actually go by Bucky,” he says as he walks into her office. He doesn’t feel comfortable with James. Maybe it’s because Bucky is a name that _he_ chose and is therefore truly his, or maybe because HYDRA never tainted the name. 

She gestures for him to sit down in one of the chairs. “Alright, Bucky.” She sits down in a chair opposite him. 

The room is very cosy, designed to make people feel at ease. There is nothing clinical about it and Bucky feels some of the tension leave his body. This is more like sitting in someone’s living room than being at a doctor’s appointment. 

“I understand T’Challa recommended me to you,” she begins. Bucky nods. “Did he tell you what I do?”

“He just said you specialize in trauma,” Bucky says. Suddenly he begins to wonder what exactly this therapy entails. He’d assumed it would just be talking, but apparently Dr. Ngeme does something else. He’s skeptical enough as it is of this and his confidence sinks as his mind conjures up images of weird, alternative science. He immediately chastises himself; Wakanda is the most advanced nation on earth. They must know what works and what doesn’t.

Dr. Ngeme nods. “Have you ever heard of EMDR therapy?” she asks. Bucky shakes his head. “Okay, well, it stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. The goal is to help you process your traumatic memories in a safe and controlled way.” She pauses for a few seconds. “Now, this will sound intimidating, but if we choose this therapy, I will ask you to relive your memories. While you’re thinking of the traumatic event, I will distract you by moving my fingers from left to right and asking you to follow them, like this.” She demonstrates the movement. “This way, you won’t be able to focus completely on the memory, since you also have to focus on my hand, and you won’t experience full-blown flashbacks. The movement is also meant to ensure that you start associating, images and sensations coming to the surface. In the end, you will hopefully be able to think of the memories with less anxiety and pain.”

She was right, Bucky is intimidated at the prospect of having to relive memories in her office. It’s one thing to talk, when he can choose what to talk about, but to freely associate is something else. Besides, it doesn’t make much sense to him. Just cause you’re being distracted, you’re supposed to get better? “How effective is it?” he asks, trying not to sound rude.

Dr. Ngeme smiles. “Don’t worry, most people are skeptics. It sounds strange, but it really does work. In relatively simple trauma cases, a few sessions usually suffice. From what I know about your case, it will certainly take longer, but the effects are usually quite positive. I would like to talk about your past today, to see if EMDR is a good fit. I suspect it will be, but of course, we shouldn’t assume. If it is, you still have the choice to opt for something else, though I want to ask you to be open-minded and consider EMDR.” 

Bucky nods. “That’s fair.” 

“Alright. Now, the first thing I’d like to ask you is to tell me why you think you need help?” she asks kindly.

Bucky considers. He’s unsure of where to begin. “I get nightmares,” he says finally, settling on one of the more obvious reasons.

“Alright, anything else?”

Bucky shrugs. “My head’s a mess and I’d like it not to be.”

She nods. “What are your nightmares about?”

Bucky scoffs. “What aren’t they about?” 

Dr. Ngeme gives him a questioning look. “Could you explain?”

He starts fidgeting, picking at the fabric of the chair with his one hand. “Sometimes I dream about falling from the train, or about killing people I don’t even remember, or about killing Steve” - the fabric from the chair comes loose in his hand - “or about being back in that chair.” He realizes he’s rambling and that she probably only has a vague idea of what he’s talking about, but it’s like he started picking at a scab and now he can’t stop until it’s all the way off. “Those are just the highlights,” he adds. 

Dr. Ngeme looks a little troubled. “I don’t think I have to explain to you that you have a complicated history,” she begins. “I know some of it, but I’d like you to tell me in your own words, if that’s alright.”

“Where should I start?” he asks.

“Wherever you feel is appropriate. You don’t have to give me all the details, we can discuss those later.”

Bucky nods. “I was drafted in ‘43, captured by nazis, they did experiments on me. Fell off a train a coupla years later.” His voice is staccato, flat. “HYDRA found me and decided I was useful. My arm was destroyed in the fall, so they gave me a new one, a metal one. Didn’t bother with anesthetics. They trained me, made me forget everything except the bits that were useful to them. Beat and drugged the person right of out of me. And they could test my drug and pain tolerance while they were at it. They were nothing if not efficient.” He swallows thickly.

“They wiped my memory every time I was resistant.” He feels the dread in his stomach as if he’s in the chair right now, being tipped back and fed to that horrible machine. 

He looks Dr. Ngeme straight in the eye, needing to say this, needing her to know just how much of a monster he is. “I killed a lot of people. Children, too.”

To her credit, she doesn’t flinch.

He feels sick. He’s not even sure he deserves this. If the people he killed can’t be fixed, why should he?

“You are not defined by what they made you do,” Dr. Ngeme says slowly.

“Sure feels like it,” Bucky retorts. 

She looks at him sharply. “Would you have done those things if HYDRA had not captured you?” she asks.

“No, but I did them anyway,” he says, anger simmering under the surface. He sees where she’s going with this and he disagrees. He needs to be punished for what he did, he can’t just be let off the hook with a simple, “oh well, you were brainwashed,” and be done with it.

“Steve Rogers, he’s your best friend, yes?” she asks. Bucky nods, confused at the change of topic. “What if it had been Steve who fell? What if he had killed innocent people? Would you hold him responsible?”

Bucky glares at her. “No, but Steve wouldn’t have let them get that far.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You believe youdid not put up enough of a fight?” she asks.

Bucky nods.

“Why do you think they had to wipe your memory so many times, then?”

The only logical answer to that question is because he kept resisting, yet he can’t form the words. “Fine. Point taken,” he grumbles.

She smiles. “I am very persuasive.” She scribbles something on her notepad. “Alright, Bucky. From what you’ve told me, your trauma has multiple origins, as I’m sure you’re aware. I do really think EMDR will help minimize the effects of this trauma, particularly the nightmares and flashbacks. How do you feel about that?”

He’s still skeptical, but he’s also fairly certain Dr. Ngeme knows what she’s doing. “I guess we can try,” he says. 

“I’d like to make weekly appointments. EMDR is an intense form of treatment and I think it’s wise to start with practicing grounding techniques, for however long we deem it to be necessary. Once we move on to EMDR, I’d like to simply talk, like we’ve been doing today, once every three weeks. How does that sound?”

“Yeah, alright,” he says. He appreciates that she checks with him, but she’s the expert. It’s not like he has any other suggestions.

“Good. Now, for next week, I’d like to ask you to set some goals for yourself. What do you eventually want to accomplish with this therapy? Think on it, alright?”

Bucky nods. “Thank you, Dr. Ngeme,” he says before he gets up and leaves her office. 

The guy at reception smiles at him reassuringly. Bucky’s pretty sure he looks like a complete mess, but then, he figures the receptionist is not unaccustomed to people leaving this place looking like shit. 

When he gets to his apartment, he collapses in bed. He hadn’t realized how exhausting this has been. He’d gotten so worked up beforehand and during the session he frequently felt overwhelmed. He’s not looking forward to next week, scared of having to conjure up memories in great detail. He tried to keep all those details at bay today and the few times they slipped through the cracks anyway, the nausea and panic was almost immediate. 

But then, Dr. Ngeme had assured him he would be distracted by her while thinking of those memories. Maybe that would help. Or maybe it wouldn’t work on him and his fucked up brain. 

He gets lost in this spiral of thoughts for a long while. Eventually, his exhausted mind drifts off, but the horrible images are still in his head. His mind conjures up another nightmare. A little girl is standing in front of him, begging him not to kill her. He shoots her mid-plea. When she hits the ground, the little girl’s body changes and takes Wanda’s shape. He wakes up, screaming and sweating. 

A minute later there’s a knock on his bedroom door. Wanda is standing in the door opening, looking embarrassed and a little anxious. “I let myself in,” she explains. “I heard screaming.” 

“I’m fine,” Bucky says curtly. He can’t look her in the eye.

Wanda raises one eyebrow. “Liar,” she says. “We all get nightmares, you know,” she adds more softly. When Bucky doesn’t respond, she sits down on the floor next to his bed. “I dream of Lagos all the time. Sometimes I dream my brother was in the building.” 

He doesn’t know what to say. Steve had told him what happened to Pietro, but it had been distant to Bucky, up until now. Now that he’s being confronted with the open wound that Pietro left in Wanda he realizes how much she must be suffering. “I’m sorry,” he finally says quietly.

She looks up at him, trying to catch his eye. “Yeah, me too.” 

They sit like that for a while. Wanda starts singing softly in Sokovian. It’s strangely soothing, sleep overtaking him before long. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art from this chapter can be found [here](http://scheissedraws.tumblr.com/post/149453063666/i-loved-wanda-being-friends-with-bucky-in-chapter)!


	6. Chapter 6

Bucky wakes up to find Wanda gone. It was the most peaceful sleep he’s had in a long time, even if it was only for a few hours. 

He’s still tired though, his mind exhausted from yesterday’s session. He’s frustrated with himself; they didn’t even do that much, just talked about the basics and he’s already exhausted. How he’s going to get through the other sessions is anyone’s guess. 

If only he could skip this part, just jump ahead to a happier time. Picking at festering wounds terrifies him. So far, he’s managed mostly by trying very hard to ignore everything that happened to him. Granted, it didn’t always work out so well, but he managed. He always had something else to worry about, mostly his own safety and that was enough to keep his thoughts from straying to the past. The present was far too preoccupying. 

Life slowing down to this excruciating pace is the worst thing that could happen to him. No distractions, no imminent threats. His mind has nowhere else to go but the past. The truth is it reminds him of the early days of captivity, when they would isolate him for long stretches of time, waiting for his mind to break. He’s sure that the only thing that prevented him from going insane was that he refused to dream or hope. Hope was a dangerous thing for a man in his situation. He knew he was fucked. He knew Steve wasn’t coming for him because he’d been too stupid and proud to tell Steve about what Zola did to him back in Azzano. He watched Steve watch him fall and there was no doubt that Steve thought he was dead. So he didn’t come up with dream scenarios in which Steve and the Howlies came to save him, or in which the Allied armed forces just happened to stumble upon whichever facility Bucky was being held in. He just focused on what was in front of him, never day-dreaming. Not that it was of much use, in the end. He didn’t lose his mind through isolation and as soon as HYDRA realized that too, they used different, more effective methods. They always got what they wanted in the end. 

Part of him wishes the US government would just invade Wakanda to arrest him, just so he’d have something else on his mind, just to keep the action going. He despises himself for the thought. T’Challa has been so generous to all of them and he feels guilty even just entertaining the idea. But it would make everything so much easier. Either he’d go back on the run and that would keep his mind busy, or he’d be arrested and he’s sure Everett Ross and his buddies would keep him plenty occupied. He hasn’t forgotten the electric shocks they administered while he was in their cage, timed so irregularly that Bucky could never fully anticipate them. 

But then, he wouldn’t want the same fate for Wanda. The government fears her at least as much as they fear Bucky and she doesn’t even have the protection of being an American citizen. They could do whatever they wanted with her, without any reservations. 

So it comes down to this: he just has to muddle through. There are no shortcuts for him, no easy roads, not without horrible consequences for others. 

\---

That afternoon, Steve drops by. He stands in Bucky’s doorway looking a little lost, still not entirely knowing how to behave around Bucky. “Hey,” he says.

Bucky holds the door open in invitation. “Wanna come in?” he asks. He could use the company, his mind having gone off on destructive tangents all morning.

Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Um, actually, I was hoping you’d want to come outside with me. It’s really beautiful out there,” he says, smiling nervously.

He’s got a point, Bucky hasn’t even taken the time to appreciate the new environment. “Alright,” he answers. He grabs his keys and phone and they head out together. 

Once they’re out of the building, Steve takes the lead, obviously knowing exactly where they’re going. Bucky wonders how much time he’s spent walking around since they arrived. 

“I saw that doctor yesterday,” Bucky says.

Steve slows down his walk a little. “Oh. How was it?” he asks cautiously.

“She’s nice. She specializes in this trauma therapy, she thinks it’ll help me.” 

“And what do you think?”

Bucky scoffs. “Don’t know. She knows better than I do anyway. I told her I’d try.”

Steve smiles and nudges him with his elbow. “That’s real good, Buck.”

Pride clearly shines through in Steve’s eyes and for a moment, Bucky’s actually a little proud of himself. “She kinda reminded me of you sometimes,” Bucky says. “Like a dog with a bone when she wants to make a point.”

Steve actually grins. He leads them away from the city center, the buildings giving way to more and more green as they go. “It’s stunning, isn’t it?” he asks as they walk down a winding path surrounded by tall trees. “Always thought I was a city person, but I think I’m gonna have to reconsider,” he says.

It _is_ incredible, the sounds of the city falling away as if they’re in a bubble, birds chirping in the distance. It’s peaceful but not eerily quiet. Bucky always liked the hustle and bustle of the city, same as Steve. The tranquility of the countryside always put him off, even before the war. But this is different. It doesn’t feel as if life comes to a standstill here, a feeling that Bucky always got from the American countryside. Maybe it’s because they’re only just outside of the city, or maybe it’s because this part of Central Wakanda does not feel desolate, it doesn’t feel as if the city tries to get away from the sprawling nature of the country; instead, it incorporates its beauty. 

He thinks of New York, of Brooklyn, and how it tries so hard to contain nature, relegates and confines it to a massive park, its borders clear and clean. Central Wakanda blends man-made structures and nature seamlessly, neither feeling out of place. 

“I’ve been coming here a lot,” Steve says, still walking slowly. “It’s nothing like I imagined.” Bucky looks at him, waiting for him to continue. “Waking up in a different century really makes you realize how much you don’t know,” he says, laughing.

Bucky nods. So much has changed, but they weren’t present for it, not consciously anyway. 

“Natasha used to smack me on the head every time I uttered the word ‘dame’ around her,” he continues.

Bucky grins. He can picture it: Steve, completely cluelessly saying something offensive and Natasha not having any of it. “Bet you stopped saying that real quick.”

“Yep,” Steve says, grinning too. “This is good, though,” he says, gesturing to their environment. “Shaking up what we learned in school.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “Bet you wanna pick a fight with some of our teachers.” Actually, Steve _had_ picked fights with some of their teachers. Steve only respected authority when they didn’t stand in his way. He remembers the look on Sarah’s face when she found out Steve was suspended because he started an argument with Mr. Knox about something or other and lets out an involuntary laugh.

Steve looks at him questioningly. 

“Remember when you got suspended and your mom found out? I’ve never seen you so scared,” he says, trying to contain his laughter. 

Steve joins in the laughter. “It was worth it, that man was a bully.” 

“Complete asshole, more like,” Bucky corrects him.

Steve grins. “That too.”

Steve leads them to a clearing next to a river and sits down. Bucky follows his lead. This is the first time they’ve had a relaxed conversation and it feels right somehow, to be here with Steve, on the other side of the world, in a country neither of them know. The change of environment might actually be helpful. They don’t have to cling to anything they know, they don’t have to live in a city that’s weighted down with their memories and their past. They can build new memories here. 

“I come here a lot,” Steve says. “Gather my thoughts.” He lies back, closing his eyes.

Bucky looks around, feels the softness of the ground underneath him, hears the soft babble of the river, a skyscraper visible in the distance, and he understands. “What do you think about?”

“Lots of things,” Steve replies. “You,” he adds more quietly. 

Bucky feels warmth welling up inside of him, something they’ve always left unspoken hanging in the air. He didn’t have the tools to talk about it even when he was okay, so he doesn’t dare touch it now. They’ll just brush this off, like they always have, and move on.

The moment hangs between them until Bucky changes the topic. “Hey, did you ever get to see any of the Howlies again?” 

“Only Dum Dum, Gabe, and Dernier,” he replies, keeping his eyes closed. “And Peggy, of course,” he adds. “I attended all of their funerals.” His voice is quiet, strained. 

“Jesus. You didn’t go alone, did you?” Steve is the type to not want to burden anyone with his own grief, but Bucky swears to whatever god is listening, he will kick Steven Grant Rogers’ ass if he didn’t seek out support.

Steve actually smiles. “Natasha came with me every time. Sam came to Peggy’s funeral too,” he says. “Good to know that hasn’t changed,” he adds.

Bucky looks at him, confused. “What hasn’t changed?” 

“You’re still overprotective.” 

“Well, you’re still a little shit.”

Steve beams at him and Bucky feels a smile forming on his own face despite himself. 

\--- 

Bucky’s week passes by more quickly this time. Wanda and Steve keep him company almost every day, though he still has plenty of hours to himself. Sam convinces him to go running with him and Steve in the mornings, because “exercise is good for your mental health.” Bucky rolls his eyes at him but joins them anyway. Sam grumbles something about “soldiers on steroids” when Bucky and Steve start running far too fast for him to keep up, but he doesn’t seem too upset about it. 

“You do this just to mess with him, right?” Bucky asks Steve when he sees sweat pouring down Steve’s back. 

“I got a reputation to keep up. It’s just so damn hot out here. But yeah, mostly I just want to mess with Sam,” he says before sprinting off again. 

Bucky laughs and follows Steve. 

\--- 

His next appointment with Dr. Ngeme creeps up on him, anxiety settling in his stomach the night before. He barely sleeps, still feeling sick when he heads to the medical facility.

Dr. Ngeme asks him about the goals he was supposed to set. He admits he had trouble coming up with clear goals. “I just want to feel human again,” he says. It’s vague, but it’s all he could think of.

“Alright, what does that mean to you?” she asks.

Bucky considers. “I don’t want to think like the machine they made me into. I don’t want to think about tactics all the time or about what my strategy would be if I had to fight my way out of a situation, or think of everyone as a potential target.” He deliberately doesn’t mention the painful memories of all the blood on his hands because part of him thinks he deserves them. They’re a consistent reminder of all the harm he’s caused, all the lives he destroyed in a split-second. He doesn’t deserve to forget those.

“So, do I understand you correctly if I say that you want to be able to establish interpersonal relationships without your mind thinking of potential threats?” 

“Yeah, that about sums it up,” he replies.

Dr. Ngeme writes it down, then moves on to grounding techniques. She starts with simple breathing and relaxing exercises. Bucky feels mildly annoyed - as if the right breathing technique will stop his nightmares and invasive memories - but he goes along with her anyway. She tells him to touch objects around him and to describe them out loud as a method to pull himself from flashbacks. It’s frustrating and she feels his resistance.

“This might seem very silly, but it’s been proven to be quite effective. Of course, if you find that it absolutely does nothing for you when you’re experiencing flashbacks, we will try other methods. For now, I ask you to try this for a while.”

Bucky agrees, though he’s still skeptical. 

Dr. Ngeme asks him to practice, especially when he’s calm. “The idea is that this becomes so natural to you that you’ll know when and how to use it, even if you’re in distress. It’s vital that you have at least some practice if we’re going to try EMDR, because even though I will be distracting you with my fingers, I will also be asking you to relive memories, which can be very upsetting. I also want to ask you to inform the people you’re living with, so they know what’s happening when you use your grounding and they can help you.”

Bucky only informs Steve, Wanda, and Sam. He doesn’t spend much time with anyone besides Steve and Wanda. Sam is a tactical choice: he figures Sam knows about these kinds of things and can help him if Bucky needs it, though he’s still reluctant to explicitly ask Sam for help.

Over the course of the next few weeks he finds that his skepticism is mostly unfounded. The first week he’s still mostly annoyed, but he keeps practising all week anyway, mostly because he doesn’t have much better to do. By the second week, he realizes it’s becoming slightly less difficult to come back to reality after a flashback or a nightmare. It’s not _easy_ , but he doesn’t spend quite as much time feeling disoriented or sick. Sam comes over more often, sits down with him and practises for a while, all animosity replaced by a quiet professionalism for the purposes of these meetings. 

He spends his sessions with Dr. Ngeme mostly going over the basics of his life, without going into too much detail. He doesn’t talk too easily, so even spending an hour talking about relatively innocuous things is quite exhausting. 

Once Bucky indicates that he feels somewhat comfortable with his grounding techniques, they move on to the part of therapy Bucky has been dreading. Dr. Ngeme asks him to focus on a specific memory and his mind instantly zeroes in on the chair. She waves her fingers in front of his face, asking him to follow her movements. Though he can hear the buzz of the machine and he recalls the feeling of being restrained in excruciating detail, it doesn’t completely overwhelm him, the movement distracting him enough to prevent that from happening. 

She keeps it up for about half a minute, then asks him to voice his associations out loud. They come to mind easily, his mind supplying him with plenty of horrific images. He talks about the sick feeling in his stomach when the chair offers him up to the machine, about the feeling of electric currents passing through his brain, about the humiliation he felt when he couldn’t control his body, about all the times he tried to fight them off, to break out of the chair.

He’s not sure how long he’s been talking when she stops him and asks him to focus on her fingers again. The session continues like that, the memories finally being spoken out loud, but never fully overtaking him. Still, he’s shaking, he feels a little sick, and though it’s nowhere near as bad as he knows it could be, he doesn’t feel great by the end of the session. He’s exhausted.

“You’ve done really well, Bucky,” Dr. Ngeme says when their hour is almost up. “How do you feel?”

“Pretty terrible,” he says.

She nods. “I don’t want to minimize your pain, but that was to be expected. This is not a magic trick, and like I said before, these sessions are intense, so please don’t give up on EMDR yet. I would still like to end the session on a positive note though, so can you tell me if there’s anything you’ve learned about yourself or the traumatic events while associating?”

Bucky thinks about it. It’s hard to come up with something positive right now, but he tries. After a few minutes, he realizes that he _did_ put up a fight many, many times when they tried to wipe his memory, until the fight was finally completely beaten and shocked out of him. “I resisted,” he finally says, pushing the words out. They still feel strange in his mouth, so convinced that the guilt is his rightful burden to bear. He’s not yet at ease with this conclusion and he’s not sure he ever could be, but it’s something.

As soon as he’s home, he sits in his favorite chair and decides he’s not getting up for the rest of the day.


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky doesn’t feel like going outside much the first couple of days after his therapy session. Steve is visibly concerned, worried that this kind of therapy will only make matters worse for Bucky, but Bucky isn’t ready to give up on it yet. Yes, it was gruelling, but there was something cathartic about being able to think about horrible shit and not feel completely overwhelmed by it. 

Steve only stops arguing when Bucky clearly says, “I want to continue.” 

Sam, who was brought in by Steve, agrees. “You can’t expect things to go well right from the start, man. Gotta give it some time and Bucky’s asking for that time. If it doesn’t work for him, we’ll see what to do about it then.”

Bucky shoots him a grateful look while Steve tries not to glare at him. 

\--- 

That weekend, Sam organizes a group dinner. Bucky doesn’t really feel like going; he barely knows most of these people. 

So of course Sam shows up at his door on Saturday afternoon to bug him about it. “All you gotta do is sit there and eat and maybe not use your death stare on everyone,” he says.

“I don’t have a death stare,” Bucky protests.

“Yes, you do. But that’s okay, you can use it on Clint or Scott when they say something dumb, which they will. Seriously man, all you can eat food-fest and you don’t have to do any of the cooking or cleaning, how is that not a win-win situation?” 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Fine.” 

Sam claps him on the shoulder. “Awesome. See you later in the common room!” 

Bucky had never actually gone down to that room, always avoiding any group interactions. He figures as long as there’s food, he has a distraction. Besides, he tells himself, he can leave at any time. 

A few hours later, Bucky heads downstairs. A long table fills the room, most of the seats already filled. Bucky is pleasantly surprised to see T’Challa at the head of the table, and a few seconds later he spots Shuri as well. Sam and Natasha, who cooked for the evening, are busy carrying the dishes out to the table, a seemingly endless stream of food filling the wooden surface. He notices that there are no large chunks of food, no need to cut any of it, and he is silently grateful for their thoughtfulness, of sparing him the humiliation of having to ask someone to cut his food for him. 

There’s an empty seat next to Steve at one of the corners of the table - Bucky is sure Steve saved it for him, judging by the goofy smile on his face when he spots Bucky. He sits down, relieved that he isn’t hemmed in at the table, his right side free, while his vulnerable left side is flanked by Steve. Wanda, who is sitting across from him, gives him an encouraging smile.

The dinner is comfortable, easy, as others fill the space with silly stories. None of them make Bucky feel unwelcome, though his presence must be a surprise to most of them. Even Sam seemed a little shocked to see Bucky enter the room, as if he didn’t expect him to actually come down. Clint starts telling ever more ridiculous stories of improbable shots that he managed to take, to which Bucky listens with growing admiration. If he still had his other arm, he might have challenged Clint to a competition. He doesn’t know Clint well, or at all actually, only really knowing what Steve told him, which wasn’t much. His serious face certainly gave Bucky the wrong impression: turns out Clint is only serious when he absolutely has to be, and even then, he can’t help but crack a few jokes to lighten the mood.

“You know, if you’re going to make us listen to every great shot you’ve ever taken,” Natasha begins, a wicked smile forming, “I think you should also tell us about every time you lost your pants.” 

Everyone at the table bursts out in laughter.

Clint pretends to be scandalized. “There’s a king at the table!” he exclaims.

“Actually, I would love to hear these stories,” T’Challa chimes in. 

“Hey, you can’t be a great sniper and remember mundane things like putting on pants, okay?” he counters, taking a different line of defense. “Being scatterbrained comes with the job.”

Bucky raises his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

It’s silent for a moment as everyone looks at him, the implications of what he said sinking in, but the tension breaks as Scott starts to laugh and others join him. Steve looks at him with that stupid frown on his face. “That was a joke, you know,” Bucky says quietly, so that only Steve can hear. “You’re allowed to laugh.”

Steve smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

Bucky loses track of the conversation for a while, lost in thought, until a raucous story about Scott narrowly escaping arrest brings his attention back to the table. 

Before he can fully grasp what’s going on in that story, Scott already moves on to the next thing. “Hey Steve,” he says, clearly a little drunk and looking like he still can’t believe that he’s on a first-name basis with Captain America, “whatever happened to that Sharon Carter?”

Bucky turns to Steve. “Carter?”

Steve turns the color of a tomato. “She’s Peggy’s niece,” he says, avoiding Bucky’s eyes.

Bucky raises his eyebrows. He knows he’s done some questionable shit with the ladies in his time, but he wasn’t expecting something like this from Steve, who barely got out two words around women, despite running his mouth the other 98% of the time. “I’m surprised Peggy hasn’t come back from the dead to kick your ass,” he says dryly. 

“Ooooh,” Clint, completely wasted, yells. 

“Maybe she’d give them her blessing,” Scott suggests.

Bucky snorts. “Look buddy, she shot Steve when she caught him kissing some WAC and the only reason he sits here today is because he could hide behind his vibranium shield, which they hadn’t even tested then.” He turns to Steve. “You owe T’Challa some thanks for that, I guess.” He spots T’Challa smirking from the corner of his eye. “So no, I don’t think Steve would survive Peggy finding out that he’s thinking of makin’ time with her niece. Bet they didn’t include that in the history books, huh?” he adds when he sees the perplexed faces at the table. 

“Oh my God,” Clint slurs. “Barnes is a fucking goldmine of stories about Steve. Why didn’t we think of this sooner?” he asks, his voice getting progressively louder as he shares his epiphany.

Natasha and Sam roll their eyes at the same time. “Speak for yourself, Barton,” Natasha says.

“Yeah, why do you think we invited him in the first place?” Sam asks jokingly. 

Steve is still incredibly, adorably red, but he’s laughing with them now. Somehow, Bucky’s story leads to everyone sharing whatever dirt they have on the others. Wanda gets away unscathed because none of them have known her for very long, and so does Natasha, who looks like she might actually kill Clint when he launches into a story, and he abruptly shuts his mouth. T’Challa and Shuri enter into a kind of contest to see who can get the biggest laugh, each of them having plenty of embarrassing stories about the other from childhood. Thinking of T’Challa as a petulant child who was grounded by his father plenty of times for pulling all kinds of mischief certainly humanizes him. It eliminates whatever distance there was between him and the others as a result of his regal status. 

Bucky eats more than he has in years, feeling like he’s about to burst when he finishes his dessert. The others look to be in the same state, Scott can barely sit upright and Clint swears he’s about to give birth to twins. Sam and Natasha look proud of their efforts, having reduced everyone to what amounts to a food coma. Wanda is quietly dozing off, her dessert unfinished in front of her. 

T’Challa and Shuri, sensing that the night is coming to an end, thank Sam and Natasha profusely for the invitation and the dinner. They get up and as T’Challa walks past Bucky, he puts his hand on his shoulder and tells him sincerely, “It was good to see you, Bucky.” 

“It was nice to see you too,” he replies, looking at both T’Challa and Shuri. 

Steve and Bucky help Sam and Natasha clear the table, being the only ones who are still capable of walking at the moment. Between the four of them, the job is done quite quickly. They flop down on the couches in the communal area, the others still half passed out at the table. Sam and Natasha start discussing the evening between the two of them and Bucky tunes out pretty quickly. 

He’s beat. Even though he didn’t participate that much in the conversation, he still feels exhausted from being around a group of people for an entire evening. Not to mention that the food also made him sleepy. 

Steve is antsy beside him though. “Buck?” he says after a while.

“Hmm?”

“About Sharon…” Steve begins.

A knot tightens in Bucky’s stomach. “I was just joking, Stevie,” the nickname from their youth slipping out unnoticed. “Well, sorta, anyway,” he adds, plastering a grin on his face. He has no doubt Peggy _would_ kick Steve’s ass, but that doesn’t really explain why Bucky wants to do the same. 

Steve turns slightly red again. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t know either, not until the funeral. Anyway, it wasn’t like it was serious.”

“Hey, you don’t have to apologize to me,” he says, even though the knot in his stomach loosens a little. “Save that for Peggy’s vengeful ghost.”

Steve grins. “God, she would kill me.”

“She really would.” Bucky had always liked that about Peggy, her complete ruthlessness and fearlessness. She had to be, as a woman in the army. Sometimes he worried about the shit she and Steve would get up to after the war, since neither of them seemed to have a completely healthy sense of self-preservation. Knowing that Steve never got to experience that, never got his happy ending with Peggy was perhaps the most heartbreaking thing about all of this. Bucky had known for a long time that there was no happy ending for him, had known it when Zola started experimenting on him and maybe even before, when the bombs and grenades went off around his head, that there was no going back for him. 

His initial reaction upon finding out that Steve had enlisted and made himself a guinea pig for the government was anger. He was angry that someone with Steve’s kind heart would be allowed in the army, that he would see the bloody nature of war, that he would inevitably be changed by what he saw. 

For the first time in his life, he had wanted to punch Steve. He didn’t, knowing that it was futile, that the consequences of Steve’s choices were already being borne out and there was nothing Bucky could have done to stop it. 

Seeing Steve with Peggy convinced Bucky that maybe his best friend could have a happy ending after all. That maybe, amid the blood and the dirt, Steve could find someone to spend his life with. It was all Bucky had ever wanted for Steve, to be happy and healthy, and it seemed within arm’s reach. So finding out that Steve had foregone his happy ending as he landed the plane in the ice was an unpleasant surprise for Bucky. 

Somehow, the two of them are here, now. It doesn’t seem right to Bucky, the winding path of their destinies so strange that it seems unlikely that they would both end up here. Still, when Steve slumps on the couch, muttering something about “about to burst” and his leg presses against Bucky’s, centering him and pulling him from his thoughts, it feels nice to have this, here, now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art from this chapter can be found [here](http://whatthefoucault.tumblr.com/post/149429509936/you-know-if-youre-going-to-make-us-listen-to)!


	8. Chapter 8

Bucky gradually shows his face more often in the common areas, feeling slightly more comfortable around the others since the dinner. He doesn’t quite feel like part of the group, but at least they’re not complete strangers to him anymore. He still goes running with Steve and Sam when he feels up to it, and his evenings are often spent with Wanda or Steve. 

Some days he doesn’t feel like doing much, or anything at all. He spends those days in bed or hanging around his apartment, not doing anything but staring at the walls. He gets lost in thought, thinks about how he ended up here, if he should even be here, what he’s put Steve through, how he’s responsible for the Avengers falling apart, even if Steve says those tensions existed long before Bucky showed up.

He still gets nightmares every night, meaning he’s tired most of the time. Sometimes he wishes he hadn’t moved out of Steve’s apartment, so he wouldn’t have to be alone when he wakes up, sweating, scared, and disoriented. But when he thinks of the pain he would be causing Steve, he’s glad he has his own place. 

They’ve been doing so much better since Bucky got his own apartment, the conversations much lighter, and even when they accidentally touch on a painful subject, it doesn’t carry as much tension as it did before. They still don’t know how to openly talk about the messy stuff, Bucky doesn’t know where to begin and he doesn’t know how to deal with Steve’s pent up anger about what happened to Bucky. At least some of their easiness is back, the awkward silences fewer and farther between. 

The memories of what they used to be like have come into sharper focus ever since they arrived in Wakanda. Before, they were abstract, as if they happened to a different person, but Bucky feels the familiarity of being around Steve, like coming home. 

He remembers those long summer days in Brooklyn, their apartment too hot to live, but enjoying the excuse to do nothing and be lazy for once. Steve always looked healthiest in the summer, the color that drained from him in winter returning to his cheeks. If for no other reason, Bucky loved summers. 

Winters were a nightmare. Every winter Bucky worried that Steve wasn’t going to make it through, that this would finally be the winter that killed Steve. It was the biggest reason he never enlisted. Leaving Steve to his own devices, with nobody who would care if he didn’t have money for his medication or new, warmer clothes was unacceptable in Bucky’s mind. Every thought he had of being drafted, which ever since Pearl Harbor seemed like less of a possibility and more of an inevitability, was promptly ignored the second it entered his mind. He remembers the shock of being drafted, the nausea bubbling up in his stomach as he realized that if he made it back from war, Steve might not be there anymore.

Project Rebirth was a blessing and a curse. He hated that Steve was a part of the war now, but at least he was healthy. At least there would be no more asthma attacks, his heart and his spine were no longer a threat to his health, and his hearing was sharper than it had ever been. Still, Bucky felt as if something had been lost along with the serum. It took him a while to realize that the loss was not Steve’s, it was Bucky’s. A selfish voice in his head kept telling him that Steve would no longer need him now. Steve had always had to rely on Bucky for friendship, for support, for help. All of a sudden, it became clear that it was not Steve who needed Bucky, it had always been the other way around. So when Steve asked him to follow him, there was no doubt in Bucky’s mind: he would follow Steve wherever he went. 

The more time he spends with Steve, the better he understands those memories. The abstract is replaced by the reality of being in Steve’s presence. There is something grounding about being around Steve, something that settles inside Bucky, that tells him Steve is the one truth he’s always known. He’s the one constant Bucky has always been able to count on. 

\--- 

His second EMDR session with Dr. Ngeme goes slightly better than the first. He is still beat afterwards, and Steve is still quite visibly concerned when he sees the state Bucky is in. The truth of the matter is that there is no easy way to deal with the things he’s been through. Recovery isn’t pretty, this much Bucky knows. But it’s liberating to be able to focus on those excruciating memories without getting lost in them, to be able to see through that haze of pain and finally come to a new or different conclusion. It might be slow going, but he does feel like this could work. 

He tries to explain this to Steve, who doesn’t seem to fully understand, but he accepts that Bucky is optimistic about EMDR, even if Steve doesn’t quite share that feeling. He does tell Bucky repeatedly that he’s so proud of him. It irritated Bucky at first; it seemed infantilizing somehow, to praise Bucky for the smallest possible accomplishments, such as socializing. The more Steve says it though, the more Bucky likes to hear it. Maybe it’s because he knows Steve isn’t trying to make fun of him, that he’s being completely sincere. Whatever the reason, Bucky can’t help but smile a little every time Steve says it, which in turn ensures that Steve finds every excuse to say it.

\--- 

Today is a bad day. He slept terribly, nightmare after nightmare disrupting his sleep. He doesn’t want to be alone today. Normally he’d go to Steve, but Steve is out all day; he told Bucky T’Challa had offered to take all of them to a new training facility. Bucky had declined, in part because he didn’t feel like sparring, afraid it would trigger something, and in part because the loss of his arm left him with a lack of confidence in his own body. He didn’t regret his choice to not replace the arm with a new one, but the prospect of working out while missing an arm was not something he was ready to face. Steve had looked a little despondent, but he didn’t make an issue of it. 

He makes his way to the common area, hoping that not everyone had gone with T’Challa and Steve this morning. To his relief, he spots Natasha and Wanda, who appear to be in deep conversation. He doesn’t want to disturb them, so he sits down in a chair on the other side of the room. Their soft chatter brings Bucky back to reality, the horrible images from last night fading to the back of his mind. 

It doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes before Natasha and Wanda get up and move over to Bucky’s side of the room. 

“You look like you could use some company,” Natasha says.

Wanda nods in agreement. “Are you alright?” 

Bucky shrugs. “Bad day.” He figures that about sums it up. “Why didn’t you go with T’Challa?” he asks, genuinely curious. He certainly would have expected Natasha to tag along.

“It’s not often that we get a break from the testosterone around here,” Natasha says, smirking. “Besides, today they’ll all just show off to each other. I’ll let them have their fun today and show them who’s boss later.” 

“So all the guys went?” Bucky asks.

Natasha shakes her head. “Scott stayed behind too, he’s working with Shuri on trying to contact his daughter without being traced.” 

“He really misses her,” Wanda adds. 

A flash of guilt overwhelms Bucky. Scott wouldn’t be here, away from his kid, if it weren’t for him. Clint has had to leave his family behind too, and for what? They didn’t even know Bucky. They must be regretting their choice to follow Steve by now. They could be at home, safe, with their families, but that might never be an option for them again.

As if she can read his mind, Wanda interrupts his train of thought. “We all had to make sacrifices.” 

That’s certainly true for Wanda, Bucky thinks. She has lost her parents, her home, her brother. And yet here she is, spouting wisdom despite her age and the tragedies that have befallen her. 

“I don’t think anyone here regrets siding with Steve,” Natasha says kindly. 

“He has that effect on people, even when his ideas are batshit crazy,” Bucky says, smiling. He should regret following at least half of Steve’s hare-brained schemes, but somehow it’s impossible to look into those eyes and regret any of it, even if Bucky got his ass beat more than once as a result of one of Steve’s plans. 

Natasha and Wanda laugh. “There must be a whole side of Steve we’ve never seen,” Wanda says. “He is always so proper.”

Bucky snorts. “They did do a good job of cleaning up Captain America while he was in the ice. We ribbed him endlessly about his image during the war. Tried to make him out like some clean-cut role-model, but Steve didn’t give two shits about authority. He pissed off a lot of important people back then,” Bucky says, grinning. It was such a bizarre undertaking. They erased his past completely: his previous illnesses and ailments were only brought up so they could pat themselves on the back for their scientific achievement. They both hated it. Yes, it was great that Steve was healthy, but they worried about the precedent it would set for kids like Steve. It was bad enough for those kids when eugenics was just a theory, but to see it put in practice must have been devastating. Not to mention the other things they erased: nobody talked about Steve being from a notoriously queer neighborhood, or about him and Bucky having to hustle to make ends meet. They definitely didn’t talk about the passionate, explosive fights Steve got in when he wanted Morita and Jones to join his unit, comparing segregationists to Nazis. _That_ hadn’t gone over well, but Steve got what he wanted in the end anyway. He was too precious to them to lose. 

Wanda asks some more questions about their past, where and how they lived, about their families, about their childhood, and as Bucky answers all of her questions, he realizes that the distraction is working, at least for now. He’s still tired, but the anxiety that was thrumming in his veins after those nightmares has ebbed away. 

Scott walks in after a while and Wanda gets up to greet him. Natasha stays on the far end of the room with Bucky, who is watching Wanda and Scott talk, presumably about Scott’s daughter.

“Bucky?” Natasha asks.

“Hmm?”

“I was wrong about you,” she begins. Bucky just looks at her, confused. “Actually, I was wrong about a lot of things. Doesn’t happen to me that often,” she says, giving Bucky a sad smile. “I thought signing the Accords would defuse the situation and leave room from compromise and negotiation. After the attack on the UN, I told Steve not to go looking for you. I thought you were a lost cause. I thought so from the moment Steve found out you were still alive. And worst of all, I thought Steve wouldn’t be able to think clearly when it comes to you. Sometimes I still do. But my point is, he was right. He was right about you and he was right about the Accords. They were never going to compromise. It’s just unfortunate that it all went down like this.” 

Bucky just gapes at her, at a loss for words. 

“You bring out the best in Steve, Bucky,” she continues. “I always thought all reason would fly out the window when it comes to you, but the truth is, he can cut through all the bullshit when you’re at stake. It’s like he suddenly doesn’t give a shit about the proper procedure of things and he just goes back to his principles. I should have seen it two years ago, when he was willing to burn down SHIELD after finding out the truth. It’s scary and it’s dangerous what he’ll do for you, but he doesn’t compromise his values for you, he sees them more clearly through you. Steve would not be the same person without you.” 

Bucky has no idea what to say. Natasha’s words reverberate all the way to the core of his being. He always thought of Natasha as a little cold and distant, but she’s vulnerable now, admitting to her mistakes. Bucky shares that vulnerability, her words having stripped away most of his defences. 

She runs her hand through her hair, looking unsure of herself. “Maybe I don’t have any right to say this” she says hesitantly, “but I’ll say it anyway. Steve was devastated when he found out what happened to you, but in the end, I think finding out you’re alive was one of the best things that could have happened to him. He was so lonely before.”

“But he’s in pain,” Bucky protests. He’s seen it on Steve’s face every time he looks at Bucky, he’s seen it when Steve thinks he’s not looking.

Natasha nods. “Yes. But he loves having you around. Trust me, he may be sad and hurting because of what happened to you, but he’s so happy to have you back. You’re practically all he ever talks about. Sam has complained to me about it more than once,” she adds, smirking.

Bucky laughs. “That asshole.” Steve had told Bucky that Natasha has a way of reading people and speaking the exact truth they need to hear, but it was an entirely different thing to experience it. He still doesn’t know what to say to her.

“I hope I haven’t overstepped my bounds,” Natasha says after a considerable silence.

Bucky shakes his head. “No, no, I just, I wasn’t expecting any of that.” He takes a deep breath. “Thank you for saying that.” 

She shakes her head. “No need to thank me.”

Wanda and Scott join them then, launching into a story about Scott’s daughter, who spent most of their phone call telling Scott jokes that she herself came up with. 

\--- 

Bucky’s next session with Dr. Ngeme is a little less stressful than usual, as there is no EMDR involved this time. They just talk about how Bucky’s doing, if he notices any changes, and about his day-to-day life. 

Inevitably, Bucky tells her about the conversation he had with Natasha, relaying it to Dr. Ngeme exactly as he remembers.

“How did that make you feel?” she asks.

Bucky bites his lip. “I don’t know. I want to believe what she said, but it’s hard to think of myself like that.”

“Like what?” 

“Like I’m a good influence in Steve’s life.” He’s plucking at the fabric of his worn jeans. 

“What kind of influence do you think you are?” 

Bucky shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says again. “I’m no good for him,” he adds more quietly.

“Don’t you think it’s up to him to decide who’s good for him?” she asks kindly. “He must disagree with you, considering the lengths he went to to get you back and keep you safe.”

She’s doing that thing again where she uses logic to make Bucky agree with her. “I suppose.” He wants to believe Natasha and Dr. Ngeme. He wants to spend more time with Steve, be closer to him, be more open with him, but he doesn’t know how to do any of those things. 

“Alright, Bucky. I would like you to think of ways to address this with Steve. From what I’ve understood, you don’t tell him much of what you’re thinking for fear of hurting him and vice versa and it’s causing you anxiety about spending time with him. That’s something we will need to work on.” 

He agrees with Dr. Ngeme to work on his relationship with Steve. Baby steps, he tells himself. Baby steps. 


	9. Chapter 9

It’s too hot to go outside today, the humidity in the air far too stifling. All of them are cooped up inside. Shuri dropped by earlier and laughed at the state everyone was in: none of them were used to this particular kind of heat. Bucky had been conditioned to be able to function in any kind of weather, but that doesn’t mean he likes the stifling heat. 

He’s in Steve’s apartment, slumped lazily in a chair, mostly because it’s cooler there than in his own. That, and he’s been trying to fulfill his promise to Dr. Ngeme in the past few weeks. There hasn’t been much progress. He doesn’t want to shake the precarious easiness between them. So for the last couple of weeks he has been hanging out with Steve, trying to find a good moment to breach the topic of their friendship, but failed to find a good time. 

Today it’s too hot to even think, let alone talk about anything even remotely serious. Steve apparently feels the same, judging by the fact that he’s been sprawled out on the floor, eyes closed and barely moving, for a good hour now. 

Bucky thinks he must have fallen asleep, until he asks, eyes still closed, “Remember New York summers?” 

“I know you did your best impression of a lobster every summer,” Bucky says dryly.

Steve snorts. “Smartass.”

“Hey, can you still get sunburned?” They had only spent one summer together after the serum, and Bucky mostly remembers it being a very dreary summer, with lots of rain and not particularly warm. It certainly couldn’t compare to the heat in Brooklyn on a good summer day. Bucky rarely got sunburned even before the serum, so he couldn’t use himself for reference either. 

Steve nods. “It just fades as quick as it came.”

“Summers were always my favorite,” Bucky says, smirking. “Too hot for even your dumb ass to get into trouble.”

Steve cracks open one eye and flips him off. “You act like I spent the rest of the year prowling the streets, looking for a fight.” 

“Well.” 

“I did not.” 

“No, I guess you just accidentally stumbled on trouble every other day,” Bucky says. 

“And you just _happened_ to find me every time,” Steve counters. “Just sayin’.”

Bucky huffs. “I did not.” He vividly remembers those times he came home to find Steve with a bloodied face and bruised knuckles. “Just cause I’m an amnesiac, doesn’t mean you get to mess with my memories, Rogers,” he says mock-sternly.

Steve sits up on his elbows for the first time in over an hour, frowning. “Shit, sorry.”

Bucky cringes. “I was joking,” he says softly. He runs his hand through his hair, the heat having made it very obvious what an inconvenience long hair can be. “Why the fuck did I let it get this long?” he says, by way of changing the topic. 

In the two years that he was on the run, he would cut it himself on a semi-regular basis. Whenever he got annoyed by it, he would cut the ends. After he visited the museum and saw what he used to look like, he considered cutting his hair much shorter, but for some reason, it didn’t feel right. He wasn’t this clean-cut guy from the pictures, so he didn’t deserve to look like him. 

He looks at his right hand, frustrated. He hasn’t had a haircut in a long time and he can’t cut his hair with one hand. 

Steve sits up properly. “Need some help with that?” 

They used to do that for each other all the time. Getting a professional haircut was an irresponsible expense when you had a roommate who was perfectly capable of cutting your hair. Bucky had been a little vain in those days, always wanting to look his best, so Steve ended up with scissors in his hands far more often than the other way around. 

“If you don’t mind,” Bucky replies.

Steve smiles. “Not at all. Happy to help.” 

He looks delighted to be able to actually _do_ something for Bucky for once. Bucky usually doesn’t let him help in any way. 

“Have to wash your hair first,” Steve remarks.

Bucky notes how Steve left the subject out of that sentence, as if unsure who will be doing the washing. “It’ll be faster if you do it,” Bucky says. It’s true, washing his hair takes a bit longer now that he only has one arm. 

Bucky grabs one of the kitchen chairs, pulls it up to the bathroom sink, grabs the shampoo from the shower and sits down, while Steve runs the water.

“Head back,” Steve says when he decides the water temperature is acceptable.

For one terrifying moment, Bucky is reminded of HYDRA’s chair, but then he realizes that the chair doesn’t tip back, his feet are still steady on the ground, and the only sounds in the room are from the running water. He’s okay. He tips his head back and Steve begins the process of washing his hair. Once he realizes he’s not in danger, it’s strangely relaxing. Steve’s hands are gently massaging Bucky’s shampooed scalp. His shoulders release tension he didn’t know he was holding and he feels an electric current running down his spine. Bucky is acutely aware that this is the longest they’ve touched since coming to Wakanda. 

That thing they don’t talk about rears its head again and Bucky wills it away. They don’t need to add more complications to their relationship, it’s difficult enough to navigate a friendship as it is. Steve hasn’t said a word. Bucky wonders what’s on his mind, but he doesn’t want to ask and ruin this, whatever _this_ is. 

Steve rinses and towel-dries his hair. They move to the kitchen, where Steve finds a pair of scissors that look like they could get the job done. They’ve made do with worse. Bucky sits down on one of the bar stools, towel wrapped around his shoulders. 

“How do you want it?” Steve asks him. 

“Kinda like this,” he says, vaguely pointing to a spot about an inch below his ears. It’s shorter than how he used to cut it himself, but then, he hasn’t had to deal with this kind of heat before now.

“Alright,” Steve says as he carefully measures how much he needs to cut off. “How have you been sleeping?” he asks about a minute after he starts cutting Bucky’s hair.

“Like shit,” Bucky says flatly. No point in lying, Steve would know he’s not telling the truth.

“Yeah, me too,” Steve says quietly. “How are things with Dr. Ngeme?”

“As good as can be expected, I guess.” He wants to leave it at that, but then he remembers his promise to his therapist. He is supposed to talk to Steve. “Some of the nightmares aren’t as vivid,” he adds, forcing the words out of his mouth. His mind still supplies him with a variety of horrifying images, but it does feel like they are slowly losing some of their power. It’s as if he can locate them more firmly in the past now, instead of mixing past and present after a nightmare the way he used to do. 

He can practically hear Steve smile. “That’s good.” 

“Yeah.” Instinct again wants to end the conversation here, but he pushes through anyway. “She can be a real hard-ass.” 

“Yeah?” 

Bucky takes a deep breath. “She told me I should talk to you more.” It’s easier now that he’s not facing Steve. 

Steve’s hands still in his hair. “About what?” 

“Everything, I s’pose.” His hand is shaking. “Why did you try so hard to find me?” The question picks at an open wound, but he has to know. He needs to hear it from Steve. Not from Natasha, or his therapist; from Steve.

Steve’s hands haven’t moved. “Buck.” Steve says his name like someone punched him in the gut. “How could I not look for you? To the end of the line, remember?” His breathing hitches. “I never thought I’d see you again. It’s selfish to want you back, I know that, you’ve been through so much to get here and I have no right to be happy that you’re here, but God, Buck, it’s like this century only snapped into focus when I saw you on that bridge. And I know that’s not right, all the things they put you through shouldn’t result in me being happy and sometimes I think I never should’ve dragged you here, it’s selfish to…”

“Steve, stop,” Bucky interrupts him. “You’re not selfish. Never have been, not a day in your life.” Steve scoffs and Bucky knows him well enough to know that he’s about to argue, so he decides to cut that off immediately and turns around to face Steve. “That’s the one thing they always got right about Captain America, you’re too selfless for your own good.” He forces himself to keep looking at Steve. “And for what it’s worth, I’m happy you dragged me here. They fucked me up good, but at least here I can be fucked up with you.” 

They are skirting the edges of the thing that’s always been left unspoken again. This whole afternoon has been more intimate than Bucky had ever intended it to be. He wonders absently if he can get a heatstroke with the serum, as if that will explain how they got here. 

What’s worse, he didn’t think he’d end up having to reassure Steve that he doesn’t blame Steve for anything, that Steve’s guilt is baseless, instead of the other way around. No wonder they’ve been having so much trouble communicating: neither of them thought the other was deserving of them. 

“Learned that in therapy?” Steve, the absolute shit, asks.

Bucky snorts. “Yes, actually.” 

Steve pulls up another bar stool, haircut momentarily forgotten. “Tell me what else you talk about?” 

It’s clearly a question and Bucky knows he can say no. But now that they’ve started actually talking, he figures he might as well keep going, like a scab he can’t stop picking at. “Last session was about the time I escaped.”

Steve sucks in a breath, looks at him expectantly, but doesn’t talk. 

Bucky averts his eyes as he begins. He can’t look at Steve’s reactions right now. “I don’t even really know how I did it. It was early on, when they were still trying to figure out what they were gonna use me for. They didn’t have restraints that could hold my arm then. I knocked out some of the guards and ran like hell, busted through a bunch of doors. We were in the middle of nowhere. ‘S not like I had a plan or anything, so I just kept running. Kept walking all through the night and hid all day. Think I kept that up for a couple a weeks. Couldn’t find nothing to eat, barely found enough to drink.” He pauses, takes a breath. “I was so sick. Remember that winter of ‘37? I thought you were really going to bite it then.”

Steve nods, still doesn’t speak.

“It was like that. I knew they would find me. Couldn’t walk, their dogs would track me right to where I was hiding. You know the weirdest thing about it?” 

Steve shakes his head. He’s looking at Bucky, completely transfixed. 

“That was the best night. You’d think it was the first, but I was so scared, I couldn’t appreciate the freedom. That last night, I couldn’t be afraid anymore, just didn’t have the energy.” His voice is shaking and for the first time in a very long time outside of his therapy sessions, his eyes are burning with tears. “I saw the sun set and it was the most beautiful goddamn thing I ever saw. And the stars were so bright, Stevie, we never saw stars like that in Brooklyn.” The beauty of that night still overwhelms him, despite, or maybe because of, the ugliness that followed. Once they caught him, they started treating him even more cruelly, testing his limits in every way, but they could never take away the freedom he tasted that night. He feels a tear running down his cheek, quickly followed by another one. 

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve says, voice as shaky as Bucky’s. He finally looks at Steve, his eyes are red and puffy, tear tracks visible all the way down his cheeks. “Can I…?” He makes a move to indicate he wants to hug Bucky and Bucky nods. Steve pulls him in immediately. It’s awkward with the way they’re both sitting on bar stools, but it doesn’t matter. 

Now that the tears have started flowing, Bucky can’t seem to stop. He cries silently, all the while clinging to Steve, who tries to hold him even tighter. Bucky always thought that Steve would crumble under the weight of knowing the details of Bucky’s suffering. He didn’t expect it could be this cathartic to just let it out for once. Steve is clearly upset by what Bucky told him, but it’s not oppressive the way Bucky thought it would be when they first came to Wakanda. Their shared pain is not a burden; instead, it’s a relief.

They stay like that for a while, until Bucky mutters, “And now I gotta walk around with half a haircut.” 

Steve laughs and sits back, assessing Bucky’s hair. His eyes are still very red and puffy and Bucky suspects he doesn’t look much better. “James Buchanan Barnes, when have I ever left you with less than a pristine haircut?” He doesn’t even give Bucky a chance to answer, when he says, “That’s right, never. Turn around.” 

Bucky does and Steve goes back to work. It doesn’t take very long, or maybe Bucky just zoned out. He’s glad to feel Steve’s hands gently tugging on his hair every now and then, the physical contact grounding him. Steve finishes the haircut and sweeps up the hair on the kitchen floor.

Bucky replaces the bar stools and stands around, feeling a little awkward. Steve comes up to him as soon as the kitchen is clean and hugs him again. 

“Thank you for telling me that, Buck,” he says as he holds him. 

“Thanks for being here,” Bucky replies.


	10. Chapter 10

It’s as if that conversation is a watershed moment for Steve and Bucky. They finally spend some time _talking_ about things that matter, instead of dancing around every subject. Steve is more at ease around Bucky, he hugs him more often, or touches him casually by putting a hand on his shoulder or knocking their knees together. It’s more like the way they used to be, before the war. It’s not quite a weight lifted off his shoulders - that would be an exaggeration. It’s more like he doesn’t have to carry all of that weight all by himself now. Steve is here for him, will always be here for him. He still feels like shit most of the time, EMDR having highlighted memories he didn’t even know he had, but somehow he does feel like he’s getting better.

The next few nights, he has nightmares about the things they did to him after they found him. He was too valuable to them to be threatened with death as punishment, so instead they told him they would make sure he would never stop wishing he was dead. Every night, he wakes up in a cold sweat. He feels the sheets underneath him, moves his arm and legs to check that he’s not being held down, and takes a deep breath. He drags himself into the shower, sitting down as the water runs over him, calming his nerves. They’re among the most vivid nightmares he’s had since he started his therapy sessions. He knows he shouldn’t expect linear progress, but it’s still frustrating. He felt like he’d been doing so much better, spending more time with his fellow outcasts, talking to Steve, the nightmares less life-like. This feels like a step back. 

He brings it up with Dr. Ngeme during their next session a few days later. “I almost threw up again,” he says, after explaining the nightmares to her. 

She looks at him sympathetically, but without pity. “I wish this was a neat process, Bucky, but it’s not. It’s going to take time for your brain to reprocess the memories and for some memories that will go more smoothly than for others. You should know that it is not uncommon for trauma survivors to hate what EMDR does to them, even though they know it’s helping. This is one of the most intense forms of therapy in existence and you’ve been doing remarkably well, Bucky. You’ve made some great improvements in the past few months, you don’t have to worry if you have a bad day. You are allowed to have bad days.” She pauses to allow for a response from Bucky. When he doesn’t say anything she continues. “Let me ask you this, Bucky: do _you_ feel like EMDR is helping?”

Bucky considers. “I think so,” he answers. It’s hard to put his finger on exactly _how_ it’s helping. On the surface, it might seem like EMDR is doing more harm than good. He frequently feels sick during the sessions, he is completely drained for at least a day after a session, and sometimes he’s hit with unwelcome and unexpected memories. But he has to go through the memories in order to feel better and he’d never be able to unlock everything in his mind without this. It’s gruelling and horrifying to have to go through everything again, but somehow he knows he’ll come out better on the other end. The only way out is through. 

Dr. Ngeme asks him about Steve, so Bucky tells her about their conversation from a few days ago. 

“That’s very good, Bucky,” she compliments him once he’s told her the whole story.

For the first time since he can remember, he is actually a little proud of himself. Opening up to Steve terrified him, but it worked out alright. “It feels good to have some of our old ways back. From before the war, I mean.” He didn’t realize that it was possible to miss a person who is standing right in front of you until a few days ago, when Steve hugged him and it felt like coming home.

“What were you two like back then?” she asks.

It’s hard to put into words, but he tries anyway. “We’ve known each other since we were kids. He was sick all the time, not that he ever let that stop him.” Bucky’s heart fills with warmth when he thinks back on those days, when they were both oblivious to the horrors of the world. They may have had a rough childhood, Steve especially got a rough start in life, but as kids, it just seemed normal. Bucky used to be an idealist - it’s probably what drew him to Steve in the first place - but that idealism died a long time ago. As kids, they could still dream of a better world, one with boundless and endless progress. 

“I would’ve done anything for him,” Bucky continues. “Still would,” he adds more quietly. “I wouldn’t even know who I am without him.” When Steve said his name on that bridge, the name meant nothing to him, but there was something about the person that said it that made him halt in his tracks. He knew he had heard that name come out of that man’s mouth many, many times before and that it was important, for some reason. 

“You care about him a great deal,” Dr. Ngeme says. It’s not quite a question.

‘Caring’ doesn’t really seem to cover it. Bucky would quite literally be lost without Steve. For as long as he can remember, Steve has been the single most important person in his life. He shakes his head. “I love him.” 

Dr. Ngeme’s face is carefully neutral. “In what way?” she asks.

Honestly, he’s not sure. He’s never allowed his thoughts to fully go there, stomping them down the second they enter his brain. His friendship with Steve was always more important to him than exploring where those thoughts might lead him. He would never risk their friendship for something so selfish. The only reason he can even voice these thoughts now is because he knows his words won’t leave this room. They are safely contained here. 

The truth is he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Steve’s hands in his hair or about the casual touches, no matter how much he tries. Before the war, he would hide behind his tactile nature to indulge in random, casual contact. Or he would distract himself with pretty girls, who were more than willing to spend an evening with him. He doesn’t have those distractions and excuses now. 

He doesn’t want to admit to wanting more, least of all to Steve. It could ruin their friendship and that’s not something Bucky could handle right now. “I don’t know,” he finally answers. 

Dr. Ngeme looks at him as if she can see right through him, but she doesn’t argue. “There are some resources you could look at that could help you find out how you feel,” she begins. “I don’t mean to sound condescending, but a lot has changed in the past few decades and you may not be aware of all those developments.” She scribbles something on a piece of paper, folds it and hands it to Bucky. “Keep in mind that love can come in many forms and one is not necessarily superior over the other,” she adds kindly. 

Bucky doesn’t look at what she wrote down, not at all sure he’ll ever want to go there, but he takes the note anyway. “Thanks,” he says awkwardly. 

\--- 

Over the following weeks, he starts feeling a little better. The nightmares vary in intensity, but they’re mostly mild, for his standards. The days after an EMDR session are still incredibly draining, much like the sessions themselves. But when he talks to Steve, he finds he can usually do so without feeling completely sick or overwhelmed. He doesn’t plan on ever telling Steve everything - he doesn’t need to know every horrible little detail - but when the conversation ends up in more painful territory, Bucky tries not to shy away, unless he really doesn’t feel up to it. Steve hugs him every time and he tries not to think about it, all while finding every excuse to get Steve to touch him somehow. Dr. Ngeme’s list of resources is lying in a drawer somewhere in Bucky’s apartment, safely locked away. 

They talk about Steve’s experiences too. The more they talk, the more Bucky realizes all of them are at least a little fucked up. 

Steve has taken Bucky back to the clearing next to the river again. They’ve been coming here quite a lot. Sam and Wanda organized a picnic here about a week earlier, Sam apparently having made it his duty to stuff everyone with as much food as humanly possible. It had been a bad day for Bucky, he’d slept even worse than usual, but he’d gone along anyway. In the end, it turned out to be alright. Nobody asked him any questions, allowing him to choose whenever he wanted to jump into the conversation. Steve was a constant presence by his side, their knees touching as they sat cross-legged on the ground. 

Steve’s been in a nostalgic mood all day, reminiscing about their past. They’re both lying down in the grass under a tree, to take shelter from the sun.

“You really miss her, don’t you? Peggy,” Bucky adds when Steve gives him a puzzled look.

“Yeah,” he replies quietly. “I mean, it’s different ‘cause I know she got to live a full life.” He’s quiet for a while and Bucky thinks that’s the end of that topic when Steve continues. “You know, when I came out of the ice, she was only in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s. Could barely tell anything was wrong. It was brutal to see the disease slowly taking her away from everyone.”

Bucky turns his head to look at Steve. He wants to reach out and take Steve’s hand, but he doesn’t. “She deserved better,” Bucky says. He always respected Peggy, and from the moment he saw them in that bar, saw the way Steve was head over heels for her, he assumed they’d get married and that was that. Done deal. Bucky was okay with that, as long as he could still be in Steve’s life. None of them got what they wanted in the end. 

“She did,” Steve agrees.

Bucky is reminded of what Natasha said about Steve being so lonely before he found Bucky. “You been single all this time?” he asks before he can stop himself. He’s not sure he wants to hear the answer.

Steve shrugs. “Natasha’s been trying to set me up with a bunch of people.” He suddenly starts blushing a little and focuses intently on one particular cloud, purposefully avoiding Bucky’s eyes. “Went on a few dates with this guy, but it didn’t work out and well, there was Sharon but that’s not gonna go anywhere.” Steve talks so fast, Bucky’s not sure he heard him right, but since Steve’s face is now approaching the color of a tomato and he’s still staring at the sky, he figures he must have. 

Bucky tries to come up with a response, but his mind is supplying him with a dozen responses at once, each of them supremely unhelpful. Most of them are some variation on, “He’s been queer all this time, he’s just not into _you._ ” He sits up, tries to catch Steve’s eye, but he’s still not looking at Bucky. “A guy, huh?” Bucky finally says, his voice strained.

“Yeah.” 

“Huh.” 

Steve is fidgeting, doubt lining his face. “Buck, if this is…”

“Did you fuck him?” Bucky asks angrily, all but spitting out the words. He doesn’t know why he asks. As soon as the question leaves his mouth, he knows it’s a mistake. He’s just suddenly more angry than he’s been in a long time; angry with himself for never confronting his feelings about Steve, angry with this random guy he doesn’t even know, angry with Steve for reasons he can’t begin to figure out. 

Steve sits up too, finally looking at Bucky. “Jesus, Buck, what the hell?”

Bucky doesn’t answer, just tries to control his angry breathing. He fucked up.

Steve gets up. Bucky’s never seen him look so disappointed. “I thought you were better than this.” He’s on the verge of tears. “If you wanna talk about this like adults, you know where to find me,” he says before picking up his bag and heading back to his apartment.

\--- 

Bucky’s done some dumb shit in his life, but this has got to be the dumbest thing he’s ever done. He sits in the grass for a while, not knowing what to do now. He’s still angry when he thinks of some stranger’s hands all over Steve. It was different with Peggy, he accepted that Steve would settle down with a woman some day and Peggy was one of the greatest women in the world. He could hardly begrudge Steve that happiness. But this guy, whoever he was, wouldn’t know who Steve really was, he would only see his exterior and that was unacceptable.

He takes a deep breath. This train of thought isn’t helping. He really fucked up - Steve’s gonna think he’s some kind of bigot now. He heads back to his apartment, hoping to god he won’t bump into Steve on the stairs or something. He needs some time to figure out how to fix this. 

He doesn’t bump into Steve, but he does meet Wanda in the hall between their apartments. 

She’s looking at him sharply. “I just saw Steve. He looked like shit,” she says, no preamble.

“Yeah.” He doesn’t know what else to say.

“You had a fight?” Wanda guesses.

Bucky nods. “I fucked up.” 

Wanda sighs, walks towards him and all but pushes him into his apartment. “C’mon,” she says. “Let’s fix it then. Sit down,” she tells him, nudging him towards the couch. “What happened?”

At first, Bucky doesn’t answer. Answering her question means admitting to his own feelings, out loud. He needs to get out of his own head, though. It’s not like staying silent has done him any good so far. “He told me he went on a coupla dates with some guy and I...didn’t react very well.” 

Wanda cocks her head to the side. “What does that mean, you didn’t react well?”

He takes a deep breath. And another. “Steve thinks I’m disgusted by him or something but...I got jealous.” He doesn’t look at Wanda, much like Steve didn’t look at him when he talked about going on those dates.

“Ah,” she says. “That makes sense.”

Bucky looks at her, confused. “It does?” 

She rolls her eyes. “You look at each other like...how did Sam put it again? Ah, like the sun shines out of your asses.” She looks a little smug and Bucky’s not sure if it’s because she shared her keen observation or because she used an American idiom correctly.

Then it hits him that she mentioned Sam. “Sam said this?” he asks, not even trying to hide his annoyance.

“It’s not exactly a secret,” she replies. 

“Jesus Christ. Have all of you been gossiping about us?” 

Wanda shrugs. “It’s not like we have that much to do here,” she says, as if that explains everything. “Besides, we all knew Steve is bi.” 

“Bi?” Bucky asks. 

“Yeah, as in bisexual. Attracted to people of more than one gender,” she explains kindly.

“Oh, right,” he says. He really should’ve looked at those resources Dr. Ngeme provided him with. 

“You should go and talk to Steve,” Wanda suggests gently. 

He knows he should, but he’s terrified of messing this up too. The only way he can explain his reaction to Steve is by telling him the truth and it could ruin everything, but he also can’t leave it at this. They have to talk.


	11. Chapter 11

After Wanda leaves, Bucky finally looks at the websites Dr. Ngeme wrote down. He reads up on some definitions and terminology, though some of them puzzle him. He’s once again confronted with how outdated his knowledge is. He tries to figure out which label fits him well, but it stresses him out. He hasn’t felt much of any desire in the last 70-odd years, and he’s only _very_ recently begun to acknowledge that he has feelings for Steve. It doesn’t matter that much anyway, not right now. 

He reads a little more about bisexuality, just to make sure that he doesn’t fuck up again when he does talk to Steve. He wonders when Steve found out, and he hopes that Steve has had an easier time with this than Bucky is currently having. 

He stays up late reading and reading, and when he tries to go to sleep, sleep won’t come. For once it’s not nightmares that disturb his rest, it’s pure anxiety about Steve. He doesn’t know how to lay his soul bare in front of Steve; he’s been ignoring his feelings for so long that acknowledging them feels like a tidal wave. He’s in love with Steve Rogers.

He watches the sun rise from his living room, having given up on sleeping entirely. Anxiety is still thrumming in his veins, he can feel it in his hands, like ants crawling under his skin. He hangs around in his apartment until noon, when he decides that it’s time to just rip off the band-aid.

He heads downstairs to Steve’s apartment, knocks on his door and waits. Steve opens the door, looking as terrible as Bucky feels. He doesn’t hold the door open the way he usually does, clearly still guarded after yesterday.

Bucky looks at a spot on Steve’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about what I said yesterday. I shouldn’t have said that.” He glances up to gauge Steve’s face. He looks a little relieved. “Can we talk? Please?” He doesn’t exactly feel like pouring his heart out in the hallway, especially now that he knows that everyone apparently gossips about the two of them. 

Steve nods and lets him in. They sit down in the living room, Bucky takes one of the chairs, while Steve sits on the far end of the couch. 

Bucky opens his mouth to talk, but Steve cuts him off. “No, let me just say this,” he begins. “That really hurt, Buck. I never thought you would judge me like that, and every time I was nervous about telling you, I told myself I was being ridiculous. Sam said the same thing. You’ve always been there for me, it doesn’t make sense that me dating guys would be too much for you. Guess I was wrong.” Steve’s shoulders slump.

Bucky runs a hand through his hair, irritated and angry with himself that he made Steve feel this way. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Bucky says quietly. 

“Sure sounded like you did,” Steve counters.

Bucky shakes his head, more at himself than at Steve. He stares at the floor. “I wasn’t...It’s not…” He tries to explain himself, but the words won’t come. He takes a deep breath. “I don’t care that you were with a guy, Steve. Or well, I do, but not because…” Another breath. “I was jealous, okay?” There, he said it. It’s out there now. He’s still staring at his shoes, though, afraid to look at Steve, see the rejection in his eyes.

It’s quiet for what feels like an eternity. With every passing second, Bucky feels more helpless. He’s sure Steve is going to reject him, that he’s just trying to figure out a way to do it. 

“You were jealous.” Steve says, finally. He lets out a slightly hysterical laugh. “Jesus, Buck, would you look at me?” 

Bucky looks up, but he still can’t bring himself to look Steve in the eye, so he settles for Steve’s shoulder again. 

“You know why it didn’t work out with that guy?” Steve asks. “I kept comparing him to you.”

Bucky’s perplexed. “You what?” He finally looks at Steve’s face: he’s ecstatic. 

Steve scoots over on the couch to Bucky’s side of the room, their knees almost touching. “I missed you so much and nobody could compare to you, Buck. Especially when I knew you were out there, somewhere, it just seemed pointless to settle for anyone else. Having you around, in whatever way, would be so much better. Sam and Nat thought I was insane.” He’s positively beaming at Bucky now. “You have no idea how long it’s been.”

Bucky can’t remember feeling this happy and relieved. “Pretty sure I do, Stevie,” he says. “Winter of ‘34.” He’s smiling just as brightly as Steve.

Steve snorts. “And Nat said I should be in the Guinness Book of Records for longest pining, but you’ve got a coupla years on me there, buddy.” 

He scoots forward on the couch and takes Bucky’s hand in his own. Bucky’s heart is about to beat out of his chest. He tells himself to get a fucking grip, he’s a grown man for god’s sake, but his heart doesn’t listen. Not that it ever has. They lock eyes and Steve leans in even closer. Bucky thinks Steve must be able to hear his frantic heartbeat. He closes the rest of the distance, finally pressing his lips to Steve’s. 

It’s like coming home. His hand is still in Steve’s lap, safely secured in one of Steve’s. Steve’s other hand comes up to cradle his face. It’s soft, sweet, neither of them in any particular rush, despite having waited so very long to take this step. Bucky remembers this well, even if he doesn’t necessarily remember the people he kissed before. He remembers taking things slow, driving the other person wild by refusing to speed up or even so much as open his mouth. 

Out of nowhere, Bucky tastes salt and he realizes Steve has tears rolling down his cheeks. Bucky pulls back. “That bad, huh?” he says, mostly joking, though a tiny part of him is terrified that Steve is only now realizing what a mistake this was.

His doubts fade like snow before the sun when he sees the soft smile on Steve’s face. “Shuddup,” he says bashfully. A blush is forming high on his cheeks and it’s the most adorable thing Bucky has ever seen. “It’s just...it’s been so long, Buck.” 

Bucky squeezes his hand. “I know.” 

Both of them have been through so much to get here. And it’s not done yet. At some point, they will have to face the US government, Bucky will have to answer for the crimes he committed as the Winter Soldier, Steve will have to face repercussions for violating the Sokovia Accords. But just for now, they can be in a bubble. Just for now, none of that matters. 

He hates that there’s any distance between them so he moves towards the couch. “Scoot over,” he says to Steve, who does so immediately. “C’mere,” Bucky says, freeing his hand from Steve’s grip and tugging gently at his shirt. He picks up where they left off, kissing lazily, though this time, there are more points of contact between them. Steve’s hands are impatient, never settling on one place for long, while Bucky’s hand has nestled in Steve’s hair, keeping him close. 

Eventually, Bucky’s patience runs out too and the kiss turns more heated. Steve starts to get a little pushy, one hand having found its way under Bucky’s shirt at the small of his back. Bucky doesn’t mind, although part of him expected he’d have to be the one to do all the work. He’d forgotten that Steve has obviously gained some experience. 

Steve is covering more and more of Bucky’s body, slowly pushing his back into the couch arm. For a second, it feels like he’s being tipped back and it becomes hard to breathe. Black spots dance in front of his eyes and he pushes Steve away roughly, who sits back the second he feels Bucky’s resistance. Steve looks at him, wide-eyed. 

Bucky sits back up. “So I guess _that’s_ a bad idea,” he says, trying his best to keep his tone light. His harsh breathing is already subsiding. He takes Steve’s hand and squeezes it again.

“Jesus, shit, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking, shit,” Steve rambles.

“Weren’t thinking with your upstairs brain much,” Bucky quips. He nestles into Steve’s side, curling his feet up under himself. “It’s fine, just panicked for a second.”

“It’s not fine,” Steve argues. “I should’ve thought of that, I never should’ve gotten so carried away.”

Bucky sits back, looks Steve straight in the eye. “If this is gonna work at all, you need to trust me,” he says. “Shit like this will probably happen all the time. No use sitting there feeling all guilty about something neither of us coulda known, alright? But you gotta trust that I’ll let you know when something’s wrong, like I just did.”

“But..” Steve begins.

Bucky climbs in his lap and shuts him up with a kiss. “You worry too much,” he says, tracing imaginary frown wrinkles on Steve’s forehead with his index finger. “You’re gonna get prematurely old.” 

Steve snorts. “You sayin’ you’re only here for my looks, Barnes?” 

“Hm-hmm. First sign of aging, I’mma find me a new young thing,” he teases. His hand settles over Steve’s heart, feeling its strong beat beneath his palm. He wonders absently if he could have felt that with his metal arm too. “Hey, you know you were beautiful before, right?”

“What?” Steve asks, confused.

“Before the serum. Always thought you were beautiful.” The heartbeat under his hand picks up a little. “That never changed.”

Steve smiles up at him. “You know you don’t gotta sweet talk me anymore.” 

Bucky shakes his head. “No sweet talking, just stating facts.” He feels the reassuringly steady thud-thud of Steve’s heart for a while longer. There is only one thing left to say. “I love you.”

Steve stares at him in wonder. “I love you,” he echoes, pulling Bucky into a hug.

\--- 

Bucky drifts off for a few minutes, exhausted from his absolute lack of sleep the previous night. Steve soothingly rubbing his back certainly helps the process along. He’s arguably too big to be sitting in Steve’s lap like this, but he can’t find it in himself to care. The position is too awkward to really fall asleep though, so he just sits like that, sleepily. 

“So, you dated guys, hmm?” Bucky asks after a long silence.

“Just the one,” Steve answers. He sounds just as sleepy as Bucky.

“When?” Bucky’s just a little curious, especially now that he knows Steve _did_ want him all this time.

“Hmm, few years ago, I think. Nat kept trying to set me up on dates and one day I told her she should suggest some guys too. So she did.”

“Nobody cared?” Bucky asks. “That you said that, I mean?”

He feels Steve shake his head. “Not really. It’s not public knowledge or anything, but the team didn’t make a big deal of it. Sam and Nat were really helpful. Made sure I didn’t feel alone.” 

Bucky presses a soft kiss to Steve’s neck. “Future doesn’t always suck, I s’pose.” 

\---

They agree to take things slow, at least for now. Bucky is terrified of messing this up, this fragile new thing he has with Steve. They want to try and keep it to themselves for a little while, though Bucky’s not sure that’s really an option, what with the others’ apparent incessant gossiping and Wanda knowing what happened between them yesterday. Plus, Steve is a shit liar, always has been, always will be. Still, they’re going to try. 

It’s not that they don’t want the others to know, so much as they want something that’s completely theirs and theirs alone. 

It lasts maybe a day. Bucky is minding his own business, making lunch, when Wanda knocks on his door. It’s not unusual for either of them to visit the other, but Bucky suspects he knows why she decided to drop by today. He invites her in for lunch, preparing his poker face.

“So you went to Steve yesterday, right?” she asks before she’s even sat down. 

Bucky continues making lunch, back to Wanda. “Yeah.”

“Aaaaand?” 

“And we talked and we’re good now.” It’s not technically a lie. He uses his one-armed-ness as an excuse to take extra long in the kitchen, even though he’s only making rice and vegetables and he was already mostly done by the time Wanda knocked on his door. 

“That’s all?” Wanda asks, voice dripping with skepticism.

“That’s all,” Bucky repeats. He turns to her, looking her straight in the eye to emphasize his statement. He knows he’s got the poker face down. 

Wanda laughs. “Right.” 

“Sorry to disappoint,” Bucky says. 

“I’m disappointed that you can’t tell a convincing lie.” She’s smirking now.

“‘M not lying.”

“You look happier than I’ve ever seen you,” she says, more serious now. “Just because you had a good conversation?” 

She must be making this shit up. He can’t be glowing like some teenager with a crush. “Yep.” 

“Must have been some conversation.”

“It was.” 

“Hm-hmm.” The sarcasm is practically tangible. 

They’re at an impasse. Wanda is looking at him with shrewd eyes, leaving no doubt that she sees right through him. It seems a little pointless not to tell her now; she’s already made up her mind about what happened anyway. 

Bucky places the bowl in front of Wanda with a little more force than necessary. “Fine. We did more than just talk.” 

“I knew it!” she exclaims. “Soooo, you’re together now?” Excitement fills her face. She hasn’t even touched her food yet.

Bucky rolls his eyes, smiling despite himself. “Yes. Now eat.” He tries to be grumpy about Wanda’s curiosity, but he can’t really stop smiling. 

She stops prying and actually eats, much to Bucky’s relief. At least, until he hears another knock on the door. His only regular visitors are Steve and Wanda, and judging by the gleeful look on Wanda’s face, she knows it too. Sure enough, Steve is standing there, greets Bucky with a kiss, and barges in without noticing that Wanda is in the same room. 

“Sam ambushed me,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “You know how bad a liar I am, he didn’t buy it for a second.”

Bucky looks in Wanda’s direction, Steve following his gaze. “Same here, buddy.”

The world’s biggest grin is currently plastered on Wanda’s face. “You guys are adorable.”

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. “Goddammit.”

“Any chance you can keep this to yourself?” Bucky asks.

Wanda shrugs. “I won’t say a word, but the looks you give each other kind of speak for themselves.” 

“Sam said the exact same thing. Are you guys coordinating or something?” Steve asks grumpily. 

“They gossip about us, Steve,” Bucky complains. 

Wanda takes her bowl to the kitchen and rinses it. “I’ll leave you to it.” She turns to them. “I’m happy for you, and I won’t say a thing, I promise.” Bucky can’t not believe those big, sincere Bambi eyes.

“So,” Steve says once she’s left. “Guess they’ll all know pretty soon. Thought you were a better liar.”

Bucky shoves him playfully. “Keep that up and you’re not getting lunch.”

Steve instantly makes his most innocent face. “Okay, sorry. You, James Buchanan Barnes, are the greatest liar known to mankind, even though a teenager managed to get through your defen…”

“Sit down, smartass,” Bucky interrupts. He serves Steve a bowl of the rice and vegetables and sits down to finish his own. As soon as he’s done, Steve reaches out to take Bucky’s hand. “You’re a sap.” 

“Don’t care,” Steve says, mouth half-full.

“And you’re gross. Who the hell taught you those manners?” he teases.

He shrugs, as if that answers the question. Steve eats much faster than Bucky does, so he finishes eating only a few minutes later. Bucky lets go of Steve’s hand to move his chair closer to him and puts his head on Steve’s shoulder. A second later, Bucky’s hand is once again in Steve’s, right where it belongs.

They sit like that, Steve absently stroking his thumb over Bucky’s. There’s no need for words right now. They’re good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art from this chapter can be found [here](http://scheissedraws.tumblr.com/post/149639740166/last-one-for-it-will-come-back-by-sangha-inspired)!


	12. Chapter 12

As expected, everyone seems to know that Steve and Bucky are together within a day or two. Some responses are quite casual, like Natasha’s, who just offers them a knowing smile but doesn’t otherwise comment on it. Unfortunately for Steve and Bucky, she’s the exception in this building. 

They run into Scott on their way to the common area, who comes up to them the second he spots them. “Hey!” he greets them. “I heard about the gay thing, congrats guys!” He claps Steve on the shoulder as he says it, though he puts as much distance between himself and Bucky, possibly due to the glare Bucky is currently giving him. He’s not sure how to feel about all these people meddling in their private business.

Steve plasters on his Captain America face, the one that is polite, but quite devoid of personality. Steve always used that face when he felt uncomfortable, apparently that hasn’t changed much. “Thank you, Scott. For the record, I’m bi, but I appreciate the thought,” he says.

“Oh, sorry, of course!” He actually looks genuinely upset about his mistake. Bucky tones down his glare a couple of notches. “Anyway, good for you that you’re living your life. Who cares that you’re into dudes, right? And I mean, who here hasn’t had gay thoughts? I mean, you guys obviously have, but I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t, especially in this company because well, look at you guys.” 

Steve’s composure is cracking; Bucky knows him well enough to know he’s biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “Thank you for being supportive, Scott,” Steve says, smiling. 

Scott clearly means well, even though he can’t seem to stop himself from rambling whenever he’s in Steve’s presence. In fact, while the responses from the other Avengers are mildly embarrassing, they have been nothing but kind and supportive. “Thanks, Scott,” Bucky echoes. He doesn’t want Scott to think that Bucky’s taken a disliking to him. “Looks like Scott has a crush on you,” Bucky teases as soon as Scott is out of earshot.

“Ha-ha.” Steve rolls his eyes at him.

“I’m serious. Should I be worried?” he continues to tease.

Steve pulls Bucky close and kisses him long and deep, right there in the hallway. For a split second Bucky worries about who could see them, but then he realizes he doesn’t have to care. “That answer your question?” 

Bucky grins. “Maybe. Not entirely convinced yet.” He pulls Steve back in, kissing him again, letting his hand wander until it settles on the small of Steve’s back, fingers brushing the waistband of his khakis. Steve’s right hand is mirroring Bucky’s, while his left hand is a warm presence in the nape of his neck. 

“Jesus, guys, get a room,” Clint’s voice comes from the end of the hall. “You have two of them, for chrissakes!” he jokes as he approaches them.

Steve pulls back, but not before he gives Bucky an entirely sappy look. “Aren’t you the same person who regales us with tales of lost pants?” Steve shoots back.

“Uhh, those were very classy stories. You guys are out here groping each other like a couple of overgrown teenagers.”

Bucky snorts. “Well, s’not like we could do this in public when we were teenagers. Just trying to make up for lost time.”

Clint puts his hands up. “Wow, okay, you successfully guilt-tripped me. Continue your making out, grandpas.”

“Thought you said we were like teenagers,” Steve says.

Clint considers for a few moments. “You guys are grandpas acting like teenagers. True enigmas, like Benjamin Button.” Clint grins and walks past them towards the gym.

Bucky is staring at his retreating form in confusion. “Who the fuck is Benjamin Button?” 

\--- 

They are back at the river. It’s familiar now, comforting. They’d taken some food with them, sandwiches and fruit, most of which was eaten by Steve. His appetite is still at least twice that of Bucky. It’s clear that it worries Steve, but as long as Bucky eats at least normal-sized meals, Steve doesn’t complain or push. 

Steve is lying on his stomach in the grass, Bucky sitting cross-legged next to him, absently tracing patterns on his back. He feels the notches of Steve’s spine under his hand and he’s hit with memories of what this used to feel like. All those times that Steve had an asthma attack, especially after Sarah’s death, Bucky would be the one who had to take care of Steve. He would run his hand up and down Steve’s spine soothingly, feeling how crooked his spine was and silently fretting over his best friend’s health. 

Intellectually he has known for a long time that the serum fixed Steve’s scoliosis, along with his asthma, deafness in one ear, heart condition and a host of other problems. Still, this is the first time he consciously feels the physical evidence under his own hand. After Azzano, Bucky had kept a physical distance from Steve, since he couldn’t use Steve’s health as an excuse to indulge in touching him anymore. Not to mention that he was terrified Steve would be able to sense something was wrong with _him_ and he wasn’t ready to face what Zola had done to him in that lab. 

He purposefully touches each vertebrae, starting at his neck and slowly moving down. Steve shivers under his touch.

“Buck?”

“Hmm?”

“Whatcha doin’?”

He stills his hand, about halfway down Steve’s back. “Just remembering how this used to feel.” He had always hated Steve’s spine. Kids made fun of him for it in school and though he never admitted it out loud, there was no doubt that it contributed to his poor self-esteem and his need to prove himself. “It’s so straight now.”

Steve giggles, actually _giggles._ “Unlike me.” He laughs at his own joke.

“You’re terrible, you know that?” Bucky says, though he’s having trouble suppressing his own laughter.

“C’mon, that was hilarious.” He’s still laughing.

“I’m tryin’ to be all serious and deep here and you make a _pun_. Unbelievable.” 

Steve turns around to lie on his back. “You love it.”

Bucky huffs. “I love you, don’t mean I gotta love your dumb sense of humor.” 

“Liar, I can see you trying not to smile. Now get down here,” Steve says and Bucky goes willingly.

\--- 

T’Challa invites everyone over for dinner a few days later. None of them currently own any clothes that could be considered worthy of a visit to a royal palace, but T’Challa had reassured them that was alright. They’re presented with a wealth of food. Most dishes are unfamiliar to Bucky, who has mostly stuck to somewhat familiar foods during his stay in Wakanda. He regrets that choice now that he knows what he’s been missing. He still doesn’t eat as much as Steve, but he does eat more than usual. He can practically feel the pride beaming off Steve. 

T’Challa takes the time to have a personal conversation with everyone over the course of the dinner. When he gets to Steve and Bucky, Bucky is struck once again by how gracious their host is. “I apologize for not having spent much time at the complex with you,” he says.

Bucky raises his eyebrows, but before he can say anything, Steve does it for him. “You have a country to run and protect, you have other things on your mind.”

Bucky nods in agreement. “Thank you again, for letting me stay here.” He knows he must have caused T’Challa his fair share of headaches, trying to keep a known assassin hidden and safe from the American government. 

T’Challa holds up his hand. “It was the least I could do after the accusations I made. I’m glad to see you look much better.” 

Steve and Bucky take the time to thank T’Challa several times more, while T’Challa brushes it off as if his kindness and generosity was nothing. By the time he’s made his way around the table, the dinner is winding down. Once he’s back at the head of the table, Shuri whispers something in his ear and he grins. He clears his throat and stands, naturally commanding everyone’s attention. 

“Thank you all for coming tonight,” he begins. “I wish we could see more of each other and I will do my best to organize events such as these more often. Now, I believe congratulations are in order for the happy couple. Almost everyone at this table thought it vital to inform me of these new developments, so here’s to Steve and Bucky.” He raises his glass in a toast, while Steve buries his face in his hands, muttering something about how he can’t believe these are his friends. 

“I guess privacy is a thing of the past?” Bucky grumbles, though he can’t help but smile at Steve’s reaction.

Clint huffs. “You were making out all over the building!” 

“That was once,” Steve protests. “Maybe twice,” he adds when he sees the skeptical looks of everyone around him. 

“Anyway, to these grandpas!” Clint declares, raising his glass as well, quickly followed by everyone else at the table. 

Despite their jokes, they are obviously genuinely happy for the two of them. Deep down, Bucky feels something settle inside of him at the knowledge that every person in this room cares about their happiness. 

\--- 

Bucky tells Dr. Ngeme about his relationship with Steve as soon as he sees her again. 

“This is what you wanted?” she asks, voice neutral but her eyes betraying a hint of a smile.

“Yeah, I think so.” Sometimes it’s still hard to know exactly what he wants or to allow himself to want at all and to be happy when he gets it. “We’re taking it slow,” he adds.

Dr. Ngeme nods. “I think that’s wise of you.”

The session continues as normal, the routine of EMDR having become familiar, though it’s no less unsettling. Today is the first time he starts associating about the things he’s done, instead of about the things that were done _to_ him. He focuses on his first-ever target as the Winter Soldier, feels the cold biting around him. His orders were to kill one particular man, deemed a threat to HYDRA, though he was told casualties were acceptable. The little girl’s face is sharp in his mind’s eye. At the time, something about her face gave Bucky pause, though he didn’t know what it was. Now, he realizes it’s because she reminded him of his sister. She was standing between Bucky and his target, his finger on the trigger of his sniper rifle, unmoving. He couldn’t do it. 

His handlers found him a few hours later. He hadn’t tried to escape from HYDRA, he just wanted to get away from that rooftop. They made sure he forgot about the little girl. Next time, he pulled the trigger.

By the end of the session, Bucky is a mess. Dr. Ngeme has to help him use his grounding techniques more than a few times, something he thought he’d had under control for a while now. When she asks him to put this session in a positive light, his mind is blank. He just feels awful.

Dr. Ngeme gives him a few minutes, but when it becomes clear that he’s not going to produce an answer, she suggests gently, “How about: you faced memories you feared today? I know you’ve been trying to put this off, but today, you faced them.” He looks at her blankly. “Not every session has to lead to a great revelation, Bucky. You did well today.” 

“I suppose,” he finally concedes.

\--- 

Steve is waiting for him at his apartment, as they had agreed earlier today. The past few weeks, Bucky felt uncomfortably alone after therapy, so he wanted to try to have Steve there with him. Still, Steve told him beforehand that if he wasn’t in the mood for company after his session, he should tell him immediately. On his walk back to the apartment, Bucky thinks he might have to take him up on that offer. He’s completely exhausted. But then he sees Steve, and he’s glad he asked him to come. He shouldn’t be alone right now. 

Steve stands awkwardly next to the couch, unsure if he should hug Bucky. Besides, Bucky figures he must look terrible after today’s gruelling associations. “You wanna talk?” Steve asks.

Bucky shakes his head. “Wanna sleep.” He’s sure he’ll have a nightmare, but he’s so tired he can barely keep his eyes open. Even if he only gets 10 minutes of undisrupted sleep, it will be worth it.

“Do you want me to go?” Steve asks, clearly concerned.

He shakes his head again. Bucky lies down on the couch, gestures vaguely at the chair closest to his head for Steve to sit down. He’s not sure when he falls asleep; they’d been quiet for some time, Bucky lying awake, but eventually he does drift off. As he expected, it doesn’t take long for nightmarish images to invade his dreams. He’s about to shoot a pleading child when Steve’s voice pierces through, saying his name over and over again. He wakes up, sweat-soaked but only a little disoriented.

Steve is kneeling next to the couch, maintaining some distance between himself and Bucky. “Buck?”

He sits up shakily. “Can you come up here?”

Steve is next to him in an instant, wrapping his arm around Bucky and slowly pulling him closer. “Your shirt is soaked through, I’ll go get a clean one,” he says.

He makes a move to get up, but Bucky grabs his shirt. “Just stay for a minute.” 

“At least get out of this shirt,” Steve argues.

Bucky gives him a weak smile. “You tryna get me naked, Rogers?”

Steve shakes his head. “Not right now.” He tugs at the hem of Bucky’s shirt. “C’mon.” Bucky lifts his arm so Steve can pull off his shirt, dropping it on the floor. Steve stares at him, eyes fixated on his left shoulder. It’s the first time he’s seen it since that night Bucky threw up and Steve had averted his eyes then. “Do you miss it?” he asks. “The arm, I mean.”

He considers for a moment before answering. “I miss having an arm, but I don’t miss that _thing_.”

“Maybe you should talk it over with T’Challa some time,” Steve suggests. “But no rush.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. The truth is, there are a lot of tiny inconveniences he has to deal with, so he wouldn’t mind getting a prosthetic. But he’s not sure he’s ready for anyone to tinker with his arm in any way and he’d rather not test his theory right now. 

Steve raises his hand, hovering a couple of inches in front of his shoulder. “Is this okay?” he asks, intent clear.

“Think so.” He’s not sure how he’ll respond, but he trusts Steve. 

A warm hand touches the scarred skin of his shoulder gently. It’s a strange kind of intimacy. Nobody has ever touched this skin with affection before. Though most of the tissue is numb, he feels a little overwhelmed, more from the closeness of this gesture than from the actual physical sensations. 

“I barely have scars,” Steve says in a choked voice. “The serum heals almost everything. Even bullet wounds haven’t left scars like this.” He runs his other hand through Bucky’s hair, settling in the nape of his neck. “Can’t even imagine what it would take to make these.” 

Bucky has thought about it before. His body is able to withstand incredible injury, yet HYDRA found a way to leave permanent marks. His metal arm seemed to cause continuous trauma to his shoulder, the skin always an angry red, as if the scars were fresh instead of decades old. Ever since he lost the arm, he’s noticed the redness has gone down a little. 

His scars may run deep, but they are slowly fading. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art from this chapter can be found [here](http://whatthefoucault.tumblr.com/post/149517420236/anyway-good-for-you-that-youre-living-your) and [here](http://whatthefoucault.tumblr.com/post/149517943176/you-guys-are-grandpas-acting-like-teenagers-true)!
> 
> If you've made it to the end, thank you so much for sticking around!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to the amazing artists who worked on this fic [@scheissedraws](http://scheissedraws.tumblr.com/) and [@whatthefoucault](http://whatthefoucault.tumblr.com/)! Go follow them on tumblr!
> 
> I fully intend to turn this into a series, so keep a lookout for updates if you enjoyed this fic :).
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated :).
> 
> Come say hi on [my tumblr](http://hufflepuffbuckybarnes.tumblr.com/)!


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